House panel asks NTA to strengthen testing capabilities, list blacklisted firms

New Delhi: A Parliamentary standing committee on Wednesday raised concerns about the National Testing Agency (NTA)’s performance, noting that five out of 14 exams it conducted in 2024 faced irregularities, and recommended the agency to strengthen its testing capabilities using corpus amount and compile a nationwide list of blacklisted firms involved in paper setting, administration, and correction to prevent compromised service providers from obtaining contracts.

The Parliamentary standing committee on education, women, children, youth and sports in its 2025-26 demand for grants report for the department of higher education has also raised concerns over suitability of Common University Entrance Test (CUET) exam for humanities and social sciences.

The committee has recommended that NTA should expedite the implementation of the R Radhakrishnan Committee’s recommendations and conduct “additional widespread consultations with all stakeholders to adopt a protocol for the foolproof administration of nationwide competitive examinations.”

Following widespread reports of malpractices in NEET-UG exam, with the matter even reaching the Supreme Court, Centre set up a seven-member panel headed by former Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman Dr K Radhakrishnan in June to suggest ways to improve NTA’s functioning. The committee submitted its report to the government on October 21. According to the panel suggestions, NTA will, from 2025, conduct only entrance exams for higher education institutions and not recruitment exams.

Established in 2017, NTA conducts major entrance examinations such as the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Main for engineering; the National Eligibility Cum Entrance Test-Undergraduate (NEET-UG) for medicine; and the CUET for general Undergraduate and Postgraduate programmes in central universities.

According to the committee report, NTA collected an estimated ₹3,512.98 crore while it spent ₹3,064.77 crore on the conduct of examinations – it therefore netted a surplus of ₹448 crore in the last six years. The committee has recommended that to use the corpus to “build the agency’s capabilities to conduct tests itself, or to strengthen regulatory and monitoring capabilities for its vendors.”

The committee has also recommended NTA to present annual reports every year to Parliament.

CUET exam

The 31-member committee headed by Congress Rajya Sabha MP Digvijaya Singh noted that CUET was brought from the academic year 2022-23 to reduce the burden on students, universities and to bring candidates passing out from different boards on an equal footing.

“However, some members of the Committee are not convinced of the merits of introducing the CUET as the universal admissions method for undergraduate studies. Multiple Choice Question (MCQ) answers are particularly ill-suited for humanities and social sciences disciplines which are definitionally centered on independent, subjective thinking,” the report said.

The committee has recommended a review of the quality of the question paper and the design of the CUET exam.

HEFA

The committee noted that the uptake of Higher Education Funding Authority (HEFA) has been “much more limited than expected” and even after the three years of the lapse of the deadline, it achieved only 21.5% of its ₹1 lakh crore loan target by 2022, with ₹43,028 crores sanctioned and ₹21,590 crores disbursed.

Set up by the education ministry in 2017, HEFA is a joint venture of the Centre and Canara Bank, which provides 10-year loans for infrastructural development at central universities and institutions of national importance.

The committee noted that HEFA’s initial capitalization of ₹10,000 crores, intended to be leveraged through market borrowings, government-guaranteed bonds, and CSR donations, has fallen short, with current capitalization at ₹5,393.75 crores. Due to the lack of a government guarantee, no funds were raised through bonds.

The committee noted that department had entrusted the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) to review HEFA which in its report shows that on average, 78% of internal revenue raised by institutes that took HEFA loans is from student fees; in some institutions it is 100%.

The committee said it is “deeply pained” to learn that HEFA is “directly contributing to the increase in fees for students – and that this is happening with the full permission of the department of higher education.”

The committee recommended that the department “continue to finance capital expansion by central Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) through grants, with the additional option to borrow through HEFA.”

Higher education budget and loans

The budget allocation for the department of higher education in 2025-26 is ₹50,077.95 crores, which is 38.93% of the ministry of education’s total allocation of ₹1,28,650.05 crores. This marks a 5.16% increase compared to the previous year. However, the committee recommended an 8-10% rise to meet inflationary pressures and support the implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.

The committee commended PM Vidyalaxmi Scheme for providing collateral-free, guarantor-free loans to students from economically weaker backgrounds. It also offers a 3% interest subvention for students with family incomes up to ₹8 lakhs, aiming to benefit one lakh fresh students annually.

The Committee suggested expanding the Vidyalaxmi Scheme’s coverage to include loans up to ₹50 lakhs under the Priority Sector Lending (PSL) category and increasing the credit guarantee fund cover from ₹7.5 lakh to ₹20 lakh.

The committee also urged the department for immediate implementation of the Seventh Pay Commission in all Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR) -affiliated research institutes and regional centers, noting delays despite the Eighth Pay Commission being underway. It also recommended the timely implementation of the Eighth Pay Commission when appropriate.

HT in December 2024 reported that institutions affiliated with ICSSR, the national body that oversees research in the social sciences in the country, have been facing an escalating financial crisis due to non-implementation of the 7th Central Pay Commission (CPC) revised pay scales which has adversely impacted both recruitment and retention of qualified staff.

National Commission for Indian Knowledge Systems

The committee has recommended the department that a National Commission for Indian Knowledge Systems may be established for strengthening the institutional framework and governance for Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS). “This Commission should be an apex body responsible for policy formulation, coordination, and implementation of IKS-related initiatives.”

Launched in December 2021, IKS scheme aim to promote inter-disciplinary research on all aspects of “Indian Knowledge Systems”, preserve, and disseminate for further research and societal applications.