Mumbai: With last month’s NEET-UG paper leak and the recent re-test still fresh in everyone’s minds, another exam scandal has hit India, this time at the state level.
The Maharashtra Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) 2026 was postponed on Saturday, a day before it was scheduled to be conducted, after parts of the question paper were allegedly leaked.
The Opposition and Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) pounced on the BJP, which heads the coalition government in Maharashtra, and was already facing the heal over NEET paper leak and CBSE exam fiasco.
Around 4.28 lakh candidates, including working teachers, had registered for MAHA TET this year, with over 6 lakh applications received for Papers 1 and 2 for the June 28 test scheduled at 1,028 centres across Maharashtra.
However, the Maharashtra State Examination Council (MSEC) decided to postpone the test after police received confidential information on Friday that some people had access to the TET question paper in Bhiwandi. Bhiwandi Police conducted a raid and asked officials from MSEC to verify the material recovered.
It was found that some of the questions in the seized documents matched the actual TET 2026 question paper, MSEC director Nandkumar Bedse said.
Even as criminal case was registered and an investigation initiated, the test has been rescheduled, with a fresh date to be announced in due course on the official website of the Maharashtra State Examination Council.
‘Paper leak govt’, says Congress
The Opposition was up in arms over Maharashtra TET paper leak.
The Congress said the BJP has become a ‘paper leak government’.
“Another paper leak. The TET paper has been leaked in Maharashtra. The exam was scheduled for tomorrow, which has now been cancelled. Under the BJP government, there is no paper that doesn’t get leaked. This government has become the ‘Paper Leak Government’,” read a post on Congress’s X handle.
The Congress has demanded a fair and impartial probe into the TET issue and strict action against those responsible.
CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke, who has been repeatedly demanding the resignation of Union Education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, was vocal as well after the development in his home state.
“TET exam paper leaked in Maharashtra. Is there any public exam left in this country that doesn’t end in a paper leak?” Dipke wrote on X.
AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal said the government has spared ‘neither the exams nor the temples’.
“Another exam has been leaked. They’ve spared neither the exams nor the temples. They’re stealing everywhere. Some of their favourite people say that the lower-level folks are doing it, and the higher-ups have no hand in it. But such massive-scale chaos happening continuously every day isn’t possible without the involvement of the higher-ups. It simply can’t be that the money isn’t reaching the top. The higher-ups are buying so many MPs and MLAs with this very money,” Kejriwal wrote on X.
AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi called the TET fiasco a ‘mess’.
“What a Mess, BJP led Maharashtra government expertise in wrongful arresting Indian Bengali Muslims as Bangladeshi has not translated into stopping TET paper leak. Who will be blamed for this paper leak, it is the incompetence of the government which has put thousands of people at hardship,” Owaisi said on X.
Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Ambadas Danve pointed out that Maharashtra was also a centre of the NEET paper leak and said that the government “did not learn anything from it.”
“Maharashtra was also a centre for NEET paper leak. But the Government didn’t learn anything from it. TET is a smaller exam, but the Maharashtra Govt didn’t pass here… I think this paper leak is a humiliation for Maharashtra Govt. This Govt cannot handle the TET paper. We are sad that Maharashtra has such a government of the BJP,” Danve was quoted as saying by ANI.
