What led to the re-test of three UGC-NET papers? | Explained

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Representational image of students checking their seating arrangements for the UGC-NET exam in Rohtak | Photo Credit: ANI

The story so far: The National Testing Agency (NTA) will re-conduct the UGC-NET examination for English, Sociology and Commerce after receiving complaints of “multiple errors” in the question papers, according to an official notification released on August 16.

The UGC-NET was held from June 22 to 30 across 87 subjects. Under the new notification, the English and Commerce papers will be re-conducted on September 9, while Sociology will be held on September 10. The same day, the NTA also released the provisional answer key for the remaining 84 papers, clarifying that the re-test will not affect the results of candidates who appeared for those subjects.

The NTA said results for the 84 unaffected subjects will be declared as scheduled, and that allocation of Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) seats and e-certificates for Assistant Professor eligibility and PhD admission will not be delayed by the re-conduct of the three papers.

On the errors, the NTA said it had formed a committee to investigate the complaints.

“The Committee recommended that, in the interest of holding a fair and error-free examination, these three papers should be re-conducted. It has therefore been concluded by NTA that papers carrying such defects do not meet the standards of fairness and error-free examination, and defects of this extent cannot be cured merely by dropping questions after the challenge process,” the notification said.

The committee found that the three papers contained “factual, typographical, translation errors, including misspelt names of prominent scholars, garbled book titles, errors in the stem wording of questions, grammatical errors, gender and number agreement errors, punctuation mistakes, and non-standard coined terms for established concepts, as well as repetition of a significant number of questions previously administered.”

Candidates who sat the Sociology paper recalled specific errors. Surya, from Chennai and currently in Delhi preparing for his PhD, was attempting the exam for the fifth time to clear JRF. He recalled sociologist T. Parsons being misspelt as “T Parsows” in one option, and George Ritzer rendered as “Putzer” in another — both prominent figures in the field. He also recalled J.K. Rowling, the Harry Potter author, appearing as an option in one multiple-choice question. “Which is funny,” he said.

Juliya, from Kozhikode in Kerala and currently pursuing a Master’s at Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi, also sat the Sociology paper — her second attempt, having first appeared in December 2025. She recalled Indian sociologist A.R. Desai being misnamed “AK Desai”.

Simran, from Bihar, sat the English paper for the third time this year to clear JRF; the fellowship available to non-NET scholars at Delhi University is a stipend of ₹8,000 a month.