NTA Orders Re-Exam for UGC-NET English, Commerce and Sociology Papers
The National Testing Agency in New Delhi has ordered fresh examinations for the UGC-NET papers in English, Commerce and Sociology after a review committee uncovered widespread factual, typographical and translation errors, along with repeated questions from previous tests.
The re-examinations are scheduled to take place on September 9 and 10. The English examination will be conducted from 9am to noon on September 9, followed by Commerce from 3pm to 6pm. The Sociology paper will be held from 9am to noon on September 10. Candidates appearing for these tests will not be required to pay any additional examination fee.
The decision was announced shortly after the NTA published provisional answer keys for 84 of the 87 subjects evaluated during the June UGC-NET examination. The answer keys for English, Commerce and Sociology had been withheld while a panel reviewed complaints submitted by candidates.
According to the testing agency, the review committee identified multiple flaws that compromised the quality and reliability of the three question papers. These included misspelt names of prominent scholars, incorrectly printed book titles, grammatical and punctuation errors, flawed Hindi translations, wrongly worded questions and non-standard terminology for established concepts.
In the Sociology paper, candidates noted distorted names of major thinkers, including "Putzer" for "Ritzer", "Parsow" for "Parsons", "Ghunye" for "Ghurye" and "A K Desai" for "A R Desai". In the English paper, candidates alleged that 67 of the 150 questions were identical to those asked in the 2024 examination, with the sequence of answer options remaining unchanged. Repetition issues were also flagged in the Commerce paper.
The NTA determined that the issues were too extensive to resolve simply by dropping questions following answer-key challenges, concluding that the papers failed to meet standards for a fair examination.
The agency clarified that re-conducting the three subjects will not delay the declaration of results for the remaining 84 subjects, nor will it impact the allocation of Junior Research Fellowships or eligibility certifications.
