Rahul Gandhi Calls Indian Examination System "Fraud", Here's How Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan Defended

Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Monday (22 July) defended the National Testing Agency (NTA) in Lok Sabha on the question raised by Congress MP Manickam Tagore in light of paper leaks.

On the allegation that the country witnessed leaks of 70 question papers in the last seven years, Pradhan asserted, "There is no evidence of any paper leak in last seven years. NEET-UG case is in Supreme Court."

"More than 240 examinations have been conducted by NTA in the last seven years. More than 5 crore applied and more than 4.5 crore aspirants took the exam," the Education Minister said.

On the NEET breach issue, he said, "Out of 4,700 centres, only one incidence of the anomaly was found in Patna and surroundings due to the proactive approach of Bihar Police and CBI."

On the question of scrapping NEET by Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) MP Kalanidhi Veeraswamy, Pradhan asserted that on the Supreme Court's order, a single all-India examination is being conducted.

Leader of Opposition (LoP) Rahul Gandhi alleged that there is a "serious problem" in our examination system. "Millions of students are concerned and convinced that the Indian examination system is a fraud," he said.

The Congress MP asked what is being done to fix the issue at a systemic level. Pradhan replied by saying that it is very unfortunate that the LoP called the country's examination system "rubbish."

"Three Bills were brought by Congress leader Kapil Sibal in 2010. One of these bills was the Prevention of Unfair Practice Bill 2010," he said alleging that these bills were brought under pressure of private medical colleges.