Guwahati: The National Testing Agency (NTA) will re-conduct the UGC‑NET examinations for English, Sociology and Commerce after a review panel found substantial errors in the question papers. The re-tests are scheduled for September 9, 2026 (English and Commerce) and September 10, 2026 (Sociology). NTA said candidates will not be charged any extra fee for the retake.
The UGC‑NET exams were held across 87 subjects in the last week of June 2026 to determine eligibility for Assistant Professor posts, allocation of Junior Research Fellowships (JRF) and PhD admissions. Complaints from candidates and student groups prompted a formal review of three subject papers.
The complaints cited multiple problems: questions repeated from earlier tests, factual inaccuracies, spelling and grammatical errors, translation faults, and mistakes in the names of scholars and book titles. According to NTA Director Abhishek Singh, “a committee constituted to examine the complaints concluded that the papers for the three subjects did not meet the required standards for a fair examination.”
The review identified several categories of defects, including poorly worded questions, punctuation and language mistakes, mismatches in gender and number agreement, use of non‑standard terminology, and incorrect references to prominent scholars. The Sociology paper reportedly contained multiple errors in scholars’ names — including misprints of George Ritzer, Talcott Parsons and A.R. Desai — and some questions were flagged as outside the prescribed syllabus.
In the English paper, 67 of 150 questions were reported to match items from the December 2024 UGC‑NET, with even the order of answer choices repeated. More than 80 questions in the Commerce paper were also found to be repeated from an earlier examination. NTA said the defects could not be remedied simply by removing problematic items through the answer‑key challenge process, and that fresh examinations were necessary to ensure fairness.
Information on examination cities, centres and admit cards for the re-tests will be announced separately on the official NTA website. The agency clarified that the re‑examinations will not delay the result schedule for the other 84 subjects; results for those subjects will be declared as planned, and JRF allocations and issuance of eligibility certificates for Assistant Professor and PhD admissions will proceed. NTA further stated that the number of candidates qualifying for Assistant Professor eligibility will be fixed at 6% of those who appeared in the June 2026 examination or the re‑test, whichever is higher.
Candidates are advised to monitor the NTA website for official updates and admit‑card releases ahead of the September re‑tests.
Original Source: https://nenow.in/national/nta-to-re-conduct-ugc-net-for-english-sociology-commerce-after-question-paper-errors.html
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Publish Date: 2026-08-17 08:15:00
