New Delhi, 20 June—The Opposition trained its guns on the Modi government after popular outrage erupted on Saturday after a NEET-UG aspirant from Maharashtra’s Nagpur was allotted an examination centre in Abu Dhabi for the re-examination to be held on Sunday.
Leading the attack, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi charged the Modi government saying a system that cannot provide a student with a centre in their own city — and instead assigns one abroad — has no right to conduct examinations while other opposition leaders declared that the repeated fiascos in the national examination for undergraduate medical aspirants showed that the Narendra Modi government was apathetic to the trauma of millions of students.
In a post in Hindi on X, Rahul wrote: “A student from Nagpur had been preparing for the NEET re-exam for a month. He downloaded his admit card just a day before the exam. His assigned centre was in Abu Dhabi. He has no passport, his family lacks the funds to send him abroad, and there is no time left. He wept all night and is refusing to take the exam — can one even imagine the level of stress involved?
“How did this even happen? No student should have to face the issue of being unable to reach their exam centre. In reality, the NTA is merely testing the patience of the country’s students and their parents,” he said.
“This is exactly what I said in Kota: this is no longer an education system. It is the exploitation of an entire generation’s money, time, and mental peace,” he said.
“Stop gambling with our children’s future. They deserve a sensitive, responsible, and accountable education and examination system — and we will ensure they get it,” he declared.
AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal called the Narendra Modi government “the most incompetent govt in history and in the world. They can’t even conduct a single exam properly.”
Abdulla Talib, a student from Nagpur, found that he had been allotted an examination centre in Abu Dhabi despite opting for centres in Nagpur, Wardha and Bhandara in Maharashtra for the NEET-UG 2026 re-examination.
According to his father, Dr Mohammed Talib, the family was shocked when the admit card issued by the NTA showed Abu Dhabi as the examination centre. The family subsequently approached the agency seeking a correction.
The NTA on X said the “grievance” was being addressed, provoking others to point out that it was a failure of the agency not the grievance of a student. Very language of the NTA reflects arrogance and not an admission of a mistake, a social media post said.
The issue quickly snowballed into a political flashpoint, with Opposition leaders citing it as evidence of continued problems in the conduct of national examinations.
Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate wrote on X: “Modi’s clueless corrupt govt has deployed airforce to carry NEET question papers, they have foolishly banned Telegram. But a student from Nagpur in Maharashtra was allotted the exam centre in Abu Dhabi. How incompetent is this govt and its agencies?”
Trinamool, Bengal’s former ruling party, didn’t let the chance slide. “Under @BJP4India, even national examinations have become a circus of chaos, blunders and complete administrative collapse. Students work day and night chasing dreams, while this insensitive regime treats their future like a joke,” the party wrote on social media.
Responding to the controversy, NTA director general Abhishek Singh said the issue had been resolved.
Addressing reports about the Nagpur candidate, Singh told ANI that the grievance had been addressed and the “candidate has now been allotted a centre in Nagpur.”
The NEET-UG 2026 re-examination is scheduled to be held on June 21 from 2pm to 5.15pm in pen-and-paper mode across 551 cities in India and 14 cities abroad for more than 22.79 lakh candidates.
The re-test is being conducted after the May 3 examination was cancelled amid allegations of a paper leak, with the Centre subsequently handing over the investigation to the CBI.
Veteran Journalist and Political Commentator
