Congress students protest after India cancels medical entrance exam over leak

Dozens of members of the Congress party’s student wing protested in New Delhi after authorities cancelled India’s medical entrance exam, turning a leak scandal into a broader crisis over merit and trust. Demonstrators chanted slogans and some tried to jump police barricades as anger mounted over the decision to scrap NEET (UG), the gateway to undergraduate medical seats across the country.

The National Testing Agency said the test, which was originally held on May 3, could not be allowed to stand and announced that a fresh date would be set later. The cancellation affected more than 22 lakh students, with Reuters estimating that about 2.3 million candidates had taken the exam across 551 cities in India and 15 cities abroad. It was the first time the NTA had cancelled NEET in its entirety.

The political fallout was immediate. Protesters demanded strict action against those behind the leak and called for Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan to resign. The government referred the matter to the Central Bureau of Investigation, which registered an FIR and formed special teams to investigate alleged irregularities and paper leak claims. The CBI said it would examine the nature and extent of the breach and whether individuals or entities connected to it had played a role.

The case has struck a nerve because NEET is more than an exam. It is the main national test for entry into undergraduate medical education and, in some streams, allied medical courses as well. NTA said no fresh registration would be required for the re-exam, no extra fee would be charged and fees already paid would be refunded, but those steps do little to erase the uncertainty faced by students who have spent years preparing for a single high-stakes test.

The cancellation also revived memories of the 2024 controversy, when the Supreme Court declined to order a retest after saying the leak was not systemic and was confined to Patna and Hazaribagh. The court warned then that a retest would have cascading effects on medical education. That history has made this year’s full cancellation especially consequential, because students, parents, coaching centers and colleges now face another round of delay while investigators try to determine how a nationally standardized exam failed even after the NTA said it had used GPS-tracked transport, watermark identifiers, AI-assisted CCTV monitoring, biometric verification and 5G jammers.