Expert-led NTA reform panels exclude states and students, raising federalism concerns

India's education governance is constitutionally shared: education is a Concurrent List subject under the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution, meaning both Parliament and state legislatures may legislate on it. This dual jurisdiction has historically created coordination gaps and diffuse accountability. Article 21A, inserted by the 86th Constitutional Amendment, 2002, guarantees every child aged six to fourteen the right to free and compulsory education, operationalised through the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009. No equivalent fundamental right, however, governs the integrity of competitive entrance examinations — making examination governance a matter of policy design rather than enforceable constitutional entitlement.

The National Testing Agency (NTA), established in 2017 under the Department of Higher Education, was created to centralise and professionalise national entrance examinations — including NEET-UG (medical admissions), JEE Main (engineering), and CUET (central universities). The rationale was standardisation, technological modernisation, and reduced institutional burden. Since inception, the NTA has conducted more than 240 examinations involving over 5.4 crore candidates. Successive paper-leak scandals, however, exposed deep institutional vulnerabilities in question-paper security, examination-centre oversight, and grievance redressal, transforming the NTA into a focal point of governance reform debate. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 further raised the stakes by envisioning every university and college becoming an autonomous, self-governing entity — making the design of admission systems a question of long-term institutional architecture, not merely administrative efficiency.