There is big news for the candidates appearing for the UGC-NET June 2026 exam. National Testing Agency (NTA) has decided to re-conduct the examination of these three subjects after finding several irregularities in the papers of English, Commerce and Sociology subjects. Candidates of these subjects will now have to appear for the exam again.
According to NTA, the number and nature of mistakes in these three papers were so high that it would not be appropriate to correct them merely by removing some questions or after Answer Key Challenge. Therefore, it has been decided to conduct the entire examination again.
When will the exam be held again?
NTA has fixed the date of re-test as 9th and 10th September.
- English: September 9, 9 am to 12 noon
- Commerce: September 9, 3 pm to 6 pm
- Sociology: 10 September, 9 am to 12 noon
The most reassuring thing is that no additional examination fee will be charged from the candidates for re-examination.
What kind of mistakes were found in the paper?
NTA said that a committee was formed after receiving many complaints from students. The committee’s investigation revealed a number of flaws in the paper, including;
- factual errors
- Typographical errors related to printing
- Translation mistakes
- Wrong writing of names of prominent scholars and writers
- book names getting messed up
- wrong wording of questions
- Grammar and Punctuation mistakes
- Use of non-standard words for established concepts
Apart from this, the committee found that a large number of questions already asked were included in the paper again. NTA says that due to these flaws, these papers did not meet the set standards of fair and error-free examination.
Questions were already being raised regarding Sociology paper
- Sociology candidates had raised questions about the quality of the paper only after the examination.
- The candidates had alleged that many names were written wrongly in the paper, there were grammar mistakes and the Hindi translation was also bad at many places.
- Some candidates had also claimed that there were questions in the paper which did not seem to be related to the prescribed syllabus.
- Giving examples, the candidates had said that the name of famous sociologist Ritzer was wrongly written as ‘Putzer’, Parsons as ‘Parsow’ and Ghurye as ‘Ghunye’.
- Similarly, AR Desai’s name was also written incorrectly as ‘AK Desai’.
- Many complaints were also received on social media and other mediums regarding these mistakes.
Accusation of repeating questions in English paper
Candidates had also raised serious questions regarding the English paper. The candidates claimed that 67 out of 150 questions were exactly or almost similar to the questions asked in the 2024 exam. Not only this, according to the candidates, the order of answer options in many questions was also the same as before. Later, complaints came to light regarding repetition of questions in Commerce paper also.
Answer key released after seven weeks
About seven weeks after the June exam of UGC-NET, NTA on Sunday released the Provisional Answer Keys of 84 out of 87 subjects. However, the answer keys of English, Commerce and Sociology were stopped. After some time, the decision to re-conduct the examination of these three subjects came to light. NTA said that it was not possible to fix the problems in these papers simply by removing questions during the Answer Key Challenge. For this reason it was decided to re-conduct the entire paper.
No impact on results of remaining 84 subjects
NTA has made it clear that re-examination of three subjects will not delay the results of the remaining 84 subjects. The results of these subjects will be released as per the schedule. Also, the process of allotment of Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) and issuing certificates of Assistant Professor and PhD Eligibility will also not be affected.
Qualifying rules for Assistant Professor
NTA has also given important information regarding Assistant Professor Eligibility. The number of candidates qualifying for this will be decided on the basis of 6% of the candidates appearing in the June examination or re-test, whichever is higher.
UGC-NET was canceled two years ago also
This is not the first case of cancellation and re-conduct of examination in UGC-NET. Even in June 2024, the exam was canceled a day after it was held. Then UGC had received input from the National Cyber Crime Threat Analytics Unit of the Home Ministry that the integrity of the examination may have been compromised. After this the examination was conducted again.
This time the matter is different. NTA has made large-scale linguistic, factual, technical and repetition of questions in the paper the basis for re-test.