The National Testing Agency (NTA) has made an estimated surplus income of ₹448.21 crore in the past six years from fees collected from students for entrance and recruitment tests but failed to take measures to prevent lapses that marked the conduct of examinations.

The Supreme Court, in its judgment on the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) paper leak case, highlighted the lapses that included the use of e-rickshaw to transport question papers to examination centres.

In a written reply in the Rajya Sabha on July 31, 2024, Union minister of state for education Sukanta Majumdar provided year-wise data on the income and expenditure of the NTA since its inception in 2018 (see chart).

According to the data, the NTA collected an estimated ₹3,512.98 crore while it spent ₹3,064.77 crore on the conduct of examinations. Congress MP Vivek Tankha wanted to know the income of the NTA from application fees and the number of staff members.

In the written reply, Majumdar said there are currently 22 employees working on deputation at the NTA. The number of contractual employees is 39, and there are 132 outsourced employees.

A government official said the NTA’s surplus is kept as its corpus for future use.

Professor Rajeev Kumar, a retired faculty member of Computer Science at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), said the NTA has outsourced almost all the responsibilities to private agencies. The NTA pays the agencies for services.

“The mismanagement in the conduct of tests including the transport of exam papers by e-rickshaw is because of the lapse by the NTA. The agency should define micro-level standard operating procedures (SOP) for exams, monitor its compliance and hold audits. Its performance on each of these aspects is poor as highlighted in the Supreme Court judgment,” Kumar said.

In its judgment, the apex court concluded that the NEET papers were leaked and highlighted several administrative and procedural flaws within the NTA’s management of the exam. The court said that it was a fact that the NEET paper leaked in Hazaribagh and Patna.

The NTA dispatched the exam papers to Hazaribagh on April 28 via a private logistics company. Two different sets of questions were stored in two custodian banks in all cities. The papers were then transported from banks to the exam centres using e-rickshaws. The court found incorrect distribution of question papers at 12 centres. These centres received question papers from Canara Bank instead of the State Bank of India.

About the use of e-rickshaws for transporting question papers, the court said such a practice raises concerns about the security and reliability of paper-handling procedures.