Guwahati: The National Testing Agency (NTA) will re-conduct the UGC-NET examinations for English, Sociology and Commerce after a review panel found substantial errors in the question papers and recommended fresh tests.
The re-examination for English and Commerce is scheduled for September 9, while candidates appearing for Sociology will take the test again on September 10. NTA said candidates will not have to pay any additional examination fee for the re-test.
The UGC-NET examination was conducted across 87 subjects during the last week of June for candidates seeking eligibility for Assistant Professor posts, Junior Research Fellowships (JRF) and PhD admissions.
The decision to hold fresh examinations followed complaints from candidates and student groups about problems in the three question papers. The concerns included repeated questions from earlier examinations, factual inaccuracies, spelling and grammatical mistakes, translation problems and errors in the names of scholars and book titles.
NTA Director Abhishek Singh said a committee constituted to examine the complaints concluded that the papers for the three subjects did not meet the required standards for a fair examination.
The review found several categories of errors, including incorrectly worded questions, punctuation and language mistakes, problems with gender and number agreement, non-standard terminology and inaccurate references to prominent scholars.
The Sociology paper, in particular, contained multiple errors in scholars’ names. Names such as George Ritzer, Talcott Parsons and A.R. Desai were reportedly printed incorrectly. Candidates also raised concerns over questions they believed were not aligned with the prescribed syllabus.
The English paper faced another major issue, with 67 of its 150 questions reportedly matching questions from the December 2024 UGC-NET examination, including the order of answer choices. More than 80 questions in the Commerce paper were also reported to have been repeated from an earlier examination.
NTA said the extent of the defects meant they could not be resolved simply by removing problematic questions through the answer-key challenge process. The agency therefore decided that fresh examinations were necessary to ensure fairness.
Details regarding examination cities, centres and admit cards for the re-test will be announced separately on the official NTA website.
The agency also clarified that the re-examination will not affect the result schedule for the other 84 subjects. Results for those subjects will be declared as planned, while JRF allocation and the issuance of eligibility certificates for Assistant Professor and PhD admission will proceed without being held up by the three re-tests.
NTA further stated that the number of candidates qualifying for Assistant Professor eligibility will be fixed at 6% of those who appeared for the June 2026 examination or the re-test, whichever number is higher.