Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh on Sunday trained guns at the National Testing Agency (NTA), the body that conducts major competitive examinations including the controversial NEET UG 2024.
In a post on social platform X, Ramesh alleged that the NTA's only purpose is to function via “outsourcing to private vendors”.
“The National Testing Agency (NTA) is at the very heart of the NEET scandal. It is a body of the Education Ministry whose only purpose is to function via outsourcing to private vendors. Not only do these vendors very often have dubious credentials but the NTA itself is headed by a person who presided over the Madhya Pradesh Public Service Commission, which has seen mega-scams,” Ramesh said.
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“In an answer to the Rajya Sabha, the Union MoS for Education has revealed that the NTA collected an estimated ₹3,512.98 crore while it spent ₹3,064.77 crore on the conduct of examinations – it therefore netted a profit of Rs. 448 crores in the last six years,” the Congress leader said.
“This corpus, however, has not been used to build the agency’s capabilities to conduct tests itself, or to strengthen regulatory and monitoring capabilities for its vendors. The future of millions of India’s youths has ultimately become a mere revenue-raising exercise for the non-biological PM’s Government,” he added.
On Friday, the Supreme Court had expanded the remit of the Centre-appointed expert panel to review the functioning of the NTA and recommend examination reforms.
A bench comprising Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud along with justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra gave the detailed reasons for their July 23 order of not scrapping the controversy-ridden NEET-UG 24 examination.
The bench flagged multiple lapses on the part of NTA like the security breach at an examination centre in Jharkhand's Hazaribagh where the rear door of the strongroom was opened and unauthorised people were permitted to access the question papers, transportation of question papers by e-rickshaws and distribution of wrong set of question papers among the candidates.
The bench said the remit of the committee, in addition to the tasks that it has been entrusted with by the union government and the NTA, shall encompass examination security and administration, data security and technological enhancements.
(With PTI inputs)