The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
Jairam targets govt over NTA: Future of youth reduced to revenue- raising
THE FUTURE of India’s youth has “ultimately become a mere revenue- raising exercise” for the Government, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said Sunday, pointing to the Education Ministry’s data on the revenue and expenditure of the National Testing Agency ( NTA).
According to the data, presented by Minister of State for Education Sukanta Majumdar in Rajya Sabha on July 31 in response to a question by Congress MP Vivek K Tankha, the NTA collected a total fee income of ` 3,512.98 crore in six years from 2018- 19 to 202324. Of this, the data showed, the NTA spent ` 3,064.77 crore.
Sharing Majumdar’s Rajya Sabha reply on X, Congress’s communications head Jairam Ramesh wrote that the NTA “therefore netted a profit of ` 4 48 crore in the last six years.” “This corpus, however, has not been used to build the agency’s capabilities to conduct tests itself, or to strengthen regulatory and monitoring capabilities for its vendors. The future of millions of India’s youths has ultimately become a mere revenue- raising exercise for the non- biological PM’S government,” he wrote.
According to Majumdar’s reply, the NTA, set up in 2018, was “self- supporting through the examination fee collected.” The data showed that in 2018- 19, the NTA collected ` 101.51 crore, while in 202324 the revenue was ` 1,065.38 crore. The expenditure in 2018- 19 was ` 118.43 crore, which rose to ` 1020.35 crore in 2023- 24.
The NTA conducts three top undergraduate admissions entrance exams — JEEMain, NEET- UG and CUET- UG.
To Tankha’s question whether the NTA outsourced work related to exams to private agencies, Majumdar said operational and security measures were involved in conducting the exams which involved “engagement of specialised/ experienced agencies for providing services like capturing of biometric, frisking, CCTV surveillance, AI analytics with a view to identify any potential impersonation”.
Alleging that NTA was “at the very heart of the NEET scandal”, Ramesh wrote: “It is a body of the Education Ministry whose only purpose is to function via outsourcing to private vendors. Not only do these vendors very often have dubious credentials but the NTA itself is headed by a person who presided over the Madhya Pradesh Public Service Commission, which has seen mega- scams.”
In the ongoing Budget Session of Parliament, Opposition members have been demanding a discussion on the NEET paper leak issue. Many Opposition leaders have called for scrapping of NEET as well as NTA.