PM Narendra Modi Appoints Nandan Nilekani to Lead Exam Reform Task Force

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a high-powered task force on examination reforms on July 26, 2026, with Nandan Nilekani appointed as chairperson. The intervention follows the May NEET-UG paper leak, which sparked mass protests led by the CJP across the country.

The widespread examination crisis led to Dharmendra Pradhan resigning as education minister. As of July 25, 2026, Union Minister Pralhad Joshi was appointed to succeed Pradhan and lead the Ministry of Education as an additional charge. The government set up the new panel to address systemic vulnerabilities and restore public confidence in the national assessment infrastructure.

The Reform Task Force

The government panel is officially named the high-powered task force on examination reforms. The six-member multidisciplinary committee is tasked with overhauling India's public examination systems. The specific terms of reference involve evaluating the entire public examination lifecycle to recommend structural, administrative and technology-driven reforms for the NTA, leveraging advanced technologies like artificial intelligence and blockchain-based verification systems.

The full membership comprises Nilekani as chairperson, alongside former ISRO Chairman S. Somanath and former Intelligence Bureau Director Tapan Deka.

The committee also includes IIT Madras Director V. Kamakoti, former School Education Secretary Anita Karwal and Amrit Lal Meena, a logistics expert and senior IAS officer.

The Aadhaar Genesis

Born in 1955 in Bengaluru, Nilekani studied electrical engineering at IIT Bombay and in his first job at a company met NR Narayana Murthy. He co-founded Infosys in 1981 with Murthy and others and served as its chief executive officer from 2002 to 2007.

The Aadhaar project was conceived under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's UPA government in 2006 to fix leaky subsidies. The initiative led to the creation of the UIDAI in January 2009. The government hired Nilekani as the founding chairman in the rank of a cabinet minister in June 2009. He also chaired the Technology Advisory Group for Unique Projects (TAGUP) to design the IT architecture for the tax network and pension system.

In 2014, Nilekani resigned from UIDAI to contest the Bengaluru South Lok Sabha seat on a Congress ticket. He lost the election to the BJP's Ananth Kumar.

Bridging Political Divides

As Narendra Modi became PM, economist Montek Singh Ahluwalia said, Aadhaar was in danger of being shelved given the BJP's opposition to it while out of power. In June 2014, Nilekani met Modi to successfully pitch Aadhaar in person, preventing the project from being shelved by the incoming BJP government. Following the 2016 demonetisation, Modi appointed Nilekani to a committee mapping India's path toward digital payments at scale.

Assessing the country's readiness in 2016, Nilekani said, "India has the underlying digital financial architecture in place to get this going."

Nilekani has credited the previous UPA government for "initiating the vision" and the NDA government for "seeing the wisdom" of the project and taking it through to its "logical culmination". When the project faced criticism regarding mandatory tax filings, Nilekani defended the system. Speaking to HT in 2017, Nilekani said, "Demonising Aadhaar is not going to solve any problem."

Nilekani subsequently served on the RBI's High-Level Committee on Deepening of Digital Payments in 2019. The commerce ministry added him to its Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) council in 2021, the government's attempt to loosen Amazon and Flipkart's grip on Indian e-commerce.