On May 30, a TCS technical glitch disrupted CUET UG 2026 at centres across India. 3,765 students completed biometric registration, then sat there — servers had crashed. The afternoon shift didn’t begin until 4 PM. NTA promised a re-exam. It was the fourth time in May the agency had said that sentence.
The Month NTA Stopped Working
On May 3, NEET-UG was held. By May 12, it was cancelled — a handwritten paper had been scanned in Rajasthan and circulated as PDFs. A chemistry lecturer associated with NTA was among five arrested by the CBI. The NEET cancellation hit 23 lakh students and forced a re-exam on June 21.
Then CBSE’s new On-Screen Marking system collapsed under portal crashes and answer-sheet mix-ups. A 17-year-old student published a blog exposing tender changes and got xenophobic abuse — followed by an official apology. CBSE has been busy rolling out a three-language mandate for Class 9 while its evaluation systems can’t stay online.
On May 25, SSC GD Constable centres in UP and Bihar failed. Aspirants in Prayagraj vandalised a centre and blocked a highway after the servers went down.
Then Friday’s CUET UG 2026 technical glitch made it four exam failures in 27 days. The pattern is the point.
What the Supreme Court Just Said
“Learn from UPSC.” That was the Supreme Court’s instruction to NTA on May 29, hearing a petition from FAIMA and UDF that asks the court to dismantle the agency entirely. The bench was blunt: the real problem won’t stop till actual accountability arises.
NTA was created in 2017 to professionalise exam conduct. Since then, it has failed at least six times. Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said “I take responsibility” for the CBSE mess. Rahul Gandhi posted: “NEET, CBSE, SSC. And today CUET. Not a single exam is being conducted properly.”
40 lakh young Indians had their academic calendar broken in May. The same generation where 10 million young Indians followed a satirical protest movement in five days is watching its exam system collapse in real time. The NTA exam crisis pattern — from the NEET paper leak to the CUET UG technical failure — shows an agency that outsources its servers to TCS — a company already dealing with nine FIRs and seven arrests at its Nashik office — and its evaluation to a Hyderabad vendor, and answers to neither. The Supreme Court hearing is the only thing left that might.