UGC-NET English Re-Test Challenged In Delhi HC Over NTA’s Unexplained Decision

The Delhi High Court has sought responses from the Centre and the National Testing Agency (NTA) on a plea challenging the decision to re-conduct the UGC-NET June 2026 English examination.

Justice Jasmeet Singh issued notices to the Central government and the NTA on a petition filed by Parul Sheoran, a candidate who appeared for the examination. According to PTI, Sheoran has challenged the NTA’s August 16 notice ordering the re-conduct of the English paper.

The English and Commerce papers will be re-conducted on September 9, while the Sociology paper will be held on September 10. On August 31, the court had also directed the authorities to take a decision on refunding the examination fee. The matter has been listed for further hearing on October 6.

Sheoran has sought quashing of the August 16 notice, calling the decision arbitrary, unreasonable and procedurally unfair, besides alleging that it violates Article 14 of the Constitution, which guarantees the right to equality.

The petition claims that the decision to re-conduct the English examination was taken without disclosing the material on which it was based. It further alleges that the NTA did not follow the procedure prescribed under the UGC-NET June 2026 Information Bulletin.

According to PTI, the petitioner has sought directions to the authorities to declare or process the results of the English examination that was already conducted, in accordance with the applicable procedure.

The plea has also sought an alternative direction if the court permits or upholds the re-conduct of the English paper. It asks the authorities to refund the examination fee already paid by the petitioners for the original examination, without prejudice to their right to appear in the re-conducted examination without payment of any additional fee.

The NTA conducted the UGC-NET June 2026 examination from June 22 to 30 across 87 subjects for award of Junior Research Fellowship (JRF), eligibility for assistant professor, and admission to PhD programmes.

The agency said it had received several complaints about multiple errors in the question papers of the three subjects and formed a committee to examine the issues.

PTI reported that the committee’s report identified several types of errors in the three papers. According to the report, "the three papers had many factual, typographical, and translation errors, including mis-spelt names of prominent scholars, garbled book titles, errors in the stem wording of questions, grammatical errors, gender and number agreement errors, punctuation mistakes, and non-standard coined terms for established concepts, as well as repetition of a significant number of questions previously administered."