The Education and Health Ministry are deliberating on whether to conduct medical entrance exam NEET-UG in pen and paper mode or online mode and a decision in this regard is expected soon, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on Tuesday.

The Education Ministry has held two rounds of talks with the Health Ministry led by Union Minister JP Nadda.

Currently, NEET-UG is conducted offline - in pen and paper mode - wherein students have to solve multiple choice questions on an OMR sheet.

The National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) is the largest entrance exam in the country in terms of number of candidates appearing for the test. In 2024, a record over 24 lakh candidates took the exam.

"The administrative ministry of NEET is Health Ministry and hence we are in talks with them about whether NEET should be conducted in pen and paper mode or online mode. We have had two rounds of talks with Health Ministry led by JP Nadda. Whatever option will be considered best suited for conducting the exam, NTA is ready to undertake the exercise," Pradhan told reporters.

The Minister said a decision in this regard is expected soon and the reforms will be implemented in the 2025 edition of the exam.

"What will be NEET's methodology, what will be the protocol...a decision is expected soon. We will notify it soon," he added.

The NTA conducts the NEET every year for admission into medical colleges. A total of 1,08,000 seats are available for the MBSS course. Of the seats available for the MBBS course, approximately 56,000 seats are in government hospitals and about 52,000 are in private colleges. Admissions to undergraduate courses in Dentistry, Ayurveda, Unani, and Siddha also utilise the results of the NEET for admission.

The idea of switching to Computer Based Test (CBT) mode for NEET is not new and has been deliberated several times before. However, the push for the exam reforms came following the paper leak controversy earlier this year.

In the line of fire over alleged irregularities in NEET and PhD entrance NET, the Centre had in July set up the panel to ensure transparent, smooth and fair conduct of examinations by NTA.

According to the high-level panel headed by former ISRO Chief R Radhakrishnan, multi-stage testing for NEET-UG could be a viable possibility that needs to be followed up.

"An acceptable framework with threshholds and test objectives of scoring and ranking at each stage, and number of attempts etc. may be evolved," the panel has recommended in its report.

While NEET was under the scanner over several irregularities, including alleged leaks, UGC-NET was cancelled as the ministry received inputs that the integrity of the exam had been compromised. Both matters are being probed by the CBI.

Two other exams – CSIR-UGC NET and NEET PG – were cancelled at the last moment as a pre-emptive step.

The panel also includes former AIIMS Delhi director Randeep Guleria, Central University of Hyderabad Vice-Chancellor B J Rao, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Civil Engineering at IIT Madras K Ramamurthy, People Strong co-founder and Karmayogi Bharat board member Pankaj Bansal, IIT Delhi Dean of Student Affairs Aditya Mittal and MoE Joint Secretary Govind Jaiswal.

The committee was also been tasked with examining the existing security protocols related to the setting of the papers and other processes for various examinations and making recommendations to enhance the robustness of the system.

The panel had also opted two IIT Kanpur academicians as members -- Amey Karkare, professor of Computer Science and Engineering and Debapriya Roy, assistant professor.

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