NTA to Re-Conduct UGC-NET English, Commerce and Sociology Papers After Multiple Errors

Ziraat Times News Desk 

New Delhi: The National Testing Agency (NTA) on Sunday announced it will re-conduct the University Grants Commission National Eligibility Test (UGC-NET) June 2026 examination for three papers—English, Commerce and Sociology—after a committee identified multiple serious errors in the question papers. The original exams were held from June 22 to June 30 across 87 subjects.

A committee formed by the NTA after receiving several complaints examined the papers and found extensive factual, typographical and translation errors. These included misspelt names of prominent scholars (such as “Ritzer” rendered as “Putzer”, “Parsons” as “Parsow”, and similar mistakes involving names like Ghurye and Nussbaum in the Sociology paper), garbled book titles, errors in the stem wording of questions, grammatical mistakes, gender and number agreement errors, punctuation issues, and non-standard coined terms for established concepts. The panel also noted the repetition of a significant number of questions previously administered—reports indicated dozens of questions in the English and Commerce papers matched earlier exams, including exact option sequences in some cases.

NTA stated that defects of this scale meant the papers did not meet standards for a fair and error-free examination and could not be adequately addressed merely by dropping flawed questions during the answer-key challenge process. The agency therefore accepted the committee’s recommendation for a full re-conduct of the three papers.

The UGC-NET June 2026 cycle was taken by approximately 736,000 candidates across all 87 subjects for the award of Junior Research Fellowship, eligibility for Assistant Professor posts, and admission to PhD programmes. Candidates who appeared specifically for the English, Commerce and Sociology papers will be required to sit the re-examination; no subject-wise breakdown of the number affected by these three papers has been released by NTA.

Revised schedule:

• English: September 9, 2026 – Shift 1 (9 AM to 12 Noon)

• Commerce: September 9, 2026 – Shift 2 (3 PM to 6 PM)

• Sociology: September 10, 2026 – Shift 1 (9 AM to 12 Noon)

No additional examination fee will be charged. Details regarding examination cities, centres and admit cards will be notified separately on the official website. Results and related processes for the remaining 84 subjects will proceed as scheduled and will not be delayed by the re-conduct.