NTA in focus after three more exams canceled over 'errors'

India's National Testing Agency (NTA) has canceled three entrance exams to test the eligibility of candidates for grants, PhDs and the position of assistant professors, after receiving complaints of significant errors in the question papers. 

The exams for English, Commerce and Sociology will now be re-conducted in September, the NTA said in a statement. 

The agency said it found that "the three papers had many factual, typographical, translation errors including misspelt names of prominent scholars, garbled book titles, errors in the stem wording of questions, grammatical errors, gender and number agreement errors, punctuation mistakes, and non-standard coined terms for established concepts, as well as repetition of a significant number of questions previously administered."

While the agency has waived the fee amount for the retests, students will likely face delayed plans, another round of studying and repeated uncertainty. 

This comes months after the NTA canceled the all-India pre-medical NEET examination after its question paper was leaked. The re-examination reportedly drove tens of students to suicide and sparked youth-led protests across India, resulting in the resignation of then Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan in July.