New Delhi/ Patna : The National Testing Agency (NTA) has announced that it will re-conduct the University Grants Commission National Eligibility Test (UGC-NET) examination for English, Commerce and Sociology after a committee identified multiple errors in the question papers conducted between June 22 and June 30, 2026.
UGC-NET is conducted to determine candidates’ eligibility for Assistant Professor positions and admission to PhD programmes.
The decision marks another major examination-related setback for the testing agency this year, following the cancellation of the NEET-UG 2026 examination after a paper leak.
Re-Examination Schedule Announced
The NTA has released the following schedule for the three papers:
- English: September 9, 9 am to 12 noon
- Commerce: September 9, 3 pm to 6 pm
- Sociology: September 10, 9 am to 12 noon
The agency said details regarding examination cities, centres and admit cards will be notified separately on its official website.
Importantly, candidates appearing for the re-examination will not have to pay any additional examination fee.
Committee Flags Multiple Errors
According to the NTA, a committee was constituted after receiving several complaints regarding the three question papers.
The committee identified a range of issues, including factual, typographical and translation errors, misspelled names of prominent scholars, distorted book titles, problems in question wording, grammatical mistakes, gender and number agreement errors, punctuation issues and non-standard terms for established concepts.
The committee also found that a significant number of questions had been repeated from previous examinations and recommended conducting the three papers again to ensure a fair and error-free examination.
Candidates Raise Concerns Over Repeated Questions
Candidates had earlier raised concerns about repeated questions and errors in the English, Commerce and Sociology papers.
According to a person familiar with the matter, several questions in the English paper were reportedly repeated from the December 2024 UGC-NET examination, while similar issues were observed in the Commerce paper.
Candidates appearing for Sociology had also alleged that a handwritten-question PDF was circulated before the examination and that several questions and answer options allegedly matched those in the actual paper.
Re-Exam Creates Additional Pressure on Candidates
The decision to conduct the examination again has caused concern among candidates who will have to prepare for the test once more and, in some cases, travel to examination centres again.
Candidates have also pointed to the additional pressure created by the re-examination schedule, particularly as several other competitive and eligibility examinations are being conducted around the same period.
UGC-NET Answer Key Released
Meanwhile, the NTA has released the provisional answer keys for 84 of the 87 subjects included in the examination.
Candidates who wish to challenge the provisional answer keys can submit their objections until August 18.
The UGC-NET examination consists of two papers. Paper I contains 50 questions covering teaching aptitude, reasoning ability and related areas, while Paper II consists of 100 subject-specific multiple-choice questions.
