Decrypting The Encrypted; Unravelling Paper Leaks And Elusive Accountability In India
Komal, LL.B., Faculty of Law, University of Delhi
Ashish, LL.B., Faculty of Law, University of Delhi
INTODUCTION
Competitive examinations are not just the means of achieving academic admissions but they hold weight of the future of lakhs of applicants who walk into examination halls carrying dreams and hopes in their eyes that holds the competence to revolutionize their present. After every few years the dream is snatched from their hands, the mere reason being someone else’s greed. The system keeps on failing to put an end to this scandal and the day is stolen even before it begins. The repeated cycle of paper leaks emerging from allegations, arrests and eventually political blames continues to recur for decades. It is incisively due to unceasing advancements of scandals that a decision strengthening India’s democracy has been commenced. The resignation of India’s union education minister signalled government’s accountability averring unmistakable indication of the matter being treated with the gravity it had long demanded.
A paramount step was commenced by the Union Government in 2017 by instituting the establishment of NTA (National Testing Agency) as a Society under Indian Societies Registration Act 1860 to allay CBSE, AICTE and other alike agencies from responsibility of conducting entrance examinations. The aim for such decision was to bring in high reliability, standardized difficulty level for assessing the aptitude, intelligence and problem-solving abilities of students. Despite a proper separate entity dedicated only to entrance examinations, incidents of paper leak still emerge with numbing regularity.
The recent NEET-UG 2026 controversy is just one of the many chapters this country has witnessed too many times before. For the protection of integrity of entrance examinations, Governments have devised legislative changes that introduced technological interventions including computer-based testing, biometric verification, AI-assisted monitoring, encrypted transmission in some examinations and initiated formation of specialised investigative agencies including Special Investigation Teams (SITs), Special Task Forces (STFs). Regardless of these hopeful credible amends, the official data of number of examination leaks is immensely startling and the wave does not limit to mere entrance exams but also encompasses school level examinations. According to the reports 89 cases have been delineated in media reports covering the span of last 10 years impacting total 6.5 crore candidates and at least 64 major examination leaks impacting 19 states since 2019. Years and years of dreams of thousands is stripped away derailing the future of an entire generation by alarming frequency. A script now familiar to everyone follows itself in cycles: panic among aspirants, petitions in court, a hurried cancellation of results and an assurance of a re-test promising to restore fairness until another deleterious news finds its existence up the surface. In the wake of heightened acknowledgement of these facts, a series of sweeping amends have been proposed each bearing testimony to consensus that education is too consequential a matter to be governed by understated reckonings.
