New Delhi: A parliamentary panel has asked the Centre to explore introducing reasonable age and attempt limits for major examinations, including NEET-UG, which currently has no upper age limit or cap on attempts.
The department-related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports, in its 382nd report on reforms to the National Testing Agency (NTA), presented Friday, said it was apprised that NEET (UG) currently has no limit on how many times a candidate can attempt it, nor does it have a “real upper age limit”.
This has resulted in anomalies such as the participation of candidates above 70 years of age, it states.
The panel is headed by Mukul Wasnik, Congress MP in Rajya Sabha.
“The committee recommends that the Ministry of Education explore, alongside the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare and all other relevant stakeholders, possibilities of reasonable age limits and reasonable attempt limits to all major examinations including the NEET-UG,” the report states.
While NEET-UG has no upper age limit or cap on attempts, JEE Advanced restricts eligibility by age and allows candidates to appear a maximum of two times in two consecutive years.
The Centre had introduced a cap of three attempts and an upper age limit of 25 years (30 years for reserved-category candidates) for NEET in 2017. But the Supreme Court intervened on the age restriction that year, and candidates aged 25 and above were later allowed to apply provisionally for NEET-UG 2019 pending court proceedings. After which, the NMC removed the upper age limit in March 2022.
Panel wants government centres for CBT shift
The House Panel recommends that all examination centers for a proposed shift of the NEET-UG to computer based test (CBT) mode must be owned and operated by the Union or state governments
It said that the the transition must be preceded by investment in secure government-owned infrastructure, particularly in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities and rural areas.
The panel broadly asserted the recommendations for a phased shift to CBT format proposed by the high-level expert committee chaired by former ISRO chief K. Radhakrishnan in 2024. However, it stressed that the shift must not proceed without addressing infrastructure gaps, candidates’ access to testing facilities and the fairness of comparing scores across multiple sessions.
The report said private institutions engaged as examination centres on a subcontracted basis had “often proved to be a weak link in examination security”. “Therefore, all centres must be owned and operated by the Union and/or state governments,” it stated.
The committee suggests that the NTA itself financially support the establishment of mid-sized IT labs (100-200 nodes) in schools and colleges across the country. “As long as the school/college administration provides the space for the IT lab, the NTA can invest in the hardware equipment needed on condition that the facilities be given up to the NTA for the conduct of any examination required,” the committee states.
One test centre in every district
The House panel said the infrastructure for the transition must be distributed widely enough to prevent candidates, particularly those in rural and remote areas, from being disadvantaged. It recommended at least one examination centre in every district to reduce students’ travel and accommodation expenses.
It also said that candidates must be given opportunities to take mock examinations to familiarise themselves with the CBT format and digital interface. “The Ministry of Education may consider including CBT-based exams at the school level as well, to build familiarity with digital testing among students,” the report states.
For areas where computers or internet connectivity are inadequate, the panel proposed a temporary hybrid arrangement, where “encrypted questions may be delivered to the exam centre directly and then printed there itself, which the committee has been informed is feasible, until full CBT readiness is achieved.”
The committee also flagged the need to establish how candidates’ scores would be compared if NEET-UG were conducted in multiple sessions the way JEE (Mains) and CUET are conducted.
It called for a “robust, transparent, and independently audited normalisation methodology” to be developed and explained publicly before the transition.
However, the committee acknowledged that digital examinations also carry cybersecurity risks. It recommended setting up an in-house cybersecurity team at the NTA to develop secure examination software that prevents remote access, screen recording and the use of virtual machines. AI-based tools could also be used to identify unusual response patterns that may indicate malpractice.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
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