The National Testing Agency (NTA) has announced that re-examinations for the UGC-NET (National Eligibility Test) in English, Commerce, and Sociology will be held on September 9 and 10, 2026. This decision comes after the agency acknowledged significant errors and a high number of repeated questions in the original question papers for these three subjects.
Extensive Errors Prompt Re-examination
The NTA's decision was made public hours after provisional answer keys for 84 of the 87 UGC-NET subjects were released, while those for English, Commerce, and Sociology were withheld. A committee formed in response to numerous complaints uncovered widespread issues, including factual, typographical, and translation errors. The panel also noted misspelt names of prominent scholars, garbled book titles, incorrectly worded questions, grammatical mistakes, and the use of non-standard terms for established concepts.
A critical finding was the repetition of a significant number of questions that had appeared in previous examinations. For instance, candidates reported that the Sociology paper contained mangled names of thinkers, such as "Ritzer" appearing as "Putzer" and "Parsons" as "Parsow," alongside poor Hindi translations and questions seemingly unrelated to the syllabus. English candidates alleged that 67 out of 150 questions were identical to those from the 2024 examination, even down to the sequence of answer options. Similar complaints regarding question repetition also emerged for the Commerce paper.
Addressing these findings, the NTA stated that papers with such extensive defects failed to meet the standards of a fair and error-free examination. The agency concluded that these problems could not be resolved simply by dropping flawed questions after receiving candidate challenges, necessitating a full re-test.
Re-test Schedule and Impact on Other Subjects
The re-tests will proceed without any additional examination fees for candidates. The schedule is as follows:
- English: September 9, 2026, from 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM
- Commerce: September 9, 2026, from 3:00 PM to 6:00 PM
- Sociology: September 10, 2026, from 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM
The NTA has assured that this re-examination will not delay the results for the remaining 84 subjects. Their results will be declared as scheduled, ensuring no disruption to the allocation of Junior Research Fellowships (JRF) and the issuance of eligibility certificates for Assistant Professorships and PhD admissions.
For Assistant Professor eligibility, the agency specified that the qualifying benchmark will be 6% of candidates who appeared in either the June 2026 test or the upcoming re-test, whichever yields a higher figure.