New Delhi: A parliamentary panel has pressed the National Testing Agency (NTA) to define what qualifies as a “paper leak” under its own guidelines and to disclose whether any such leaks occurred in exams it conducted since 2018.
The move follows NTA officials’ testimony last week, where they insisted no leak emanated from their systems, stating instead that “some questions from a guess paper were in circulation,” sources said.
The Parliamentary Committee for Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports, chaired by Congress MP Digvijaya Singh, is probing the NEET paper leak allegations and the CBSE on-screen marking (OSM) dispute, having summoned senior officials from both the NTA and CBSE.
The committee has requested written responses from the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on the OSM system and from the NTA regarding the NEET exam, PTI reported.
It asked the NTA whether it carried out any internal inquiry into irregularities in NEET-UG 2024, separate from the ongoing CBI investigation.
The panel also sought details on the NTA’s staff strength over the past three years, new recruitments made since 2022, and the annual reports the NTA submitted to the Higher Education Department for the same period.
This besides, the panel demanded a comprehensive update on each of the 101 recommendations in the Radhakrishnan Committee Report and the specific actions taken by the NTA on every point, sources said.
The high-level expert committee, led by former ISRO chief K Radhakrishnan, was established in June 2024 by the Centre to recommend measures for transparent, smooth, and fair conduct of examinations through the NTA, including structural reforms, examination-process improvements, and stronger data security protocols.
Tight Deadlines Set
CBSE must respond to the panel’s questions by June 8, while the NTA has been given until June 10 to submit its written answers. Both bodies have yet to respond, sources added.
The panel also inquired with CBSE about reported “changes” across the various Requests for Proposals (RFPs) issued for the OSM system and whether any background checks were conducted on COEMPT before awarding the contract, sources added.
OSM RFP Changes Raise Bidder & Tech Concerns
The committee asked CBSE if it knew COEMPT EduTeck or its directors were previously linked to Globarena Technologies — whose software was criticized in the 2019 Telangana Intermediate results inquiry — and how that affected the contract award, sources claimed.
The panel asked why the clause barring bidders with a poor-performance history was removed in the third OSM RFP, sources claimed.
Moreover, it questioned why the ban on previously blacklisted firms was “weakened” to cover only currently blacklisted bidders, and why the minimum turnover was set at Rs 50 crore.
RFP Rules ‘Changed’
The committee wanted to know why RFP rules “changed” from favouring contractors with their own data centres to those using MeitY-empanelled centres, sources said.
The panel also sought to know why was the robotic scanner requirement “dropped and replaced with ‘sufficient scanners’”, and why was the rule to scan papers without cutting the spine removed.
It also asked why CBSE cut the minimum scanning resolution from 300 DPI to 200 DPI, according to sources.
The panel questioned why the requirement for experience handling projects with at least 5 lakh students was “dropped” and replaced with cumulative volume across multiple projects, sources said.
Sources said the panel had earlier asked CBSE for documents on the February 2025, May 2025, and August 2025 OSM RFPs, which CBSE has not provided. The committee also asked CBSE to share what action it took on the observers’ OSM dry-run report and whether it discussed the report with the Ministry of Education.
