Modi Government Explores Using Indian Air Force to Secure NEET-UG Retest Logistics

The Union government is planning unprecedented logistic steps making sure of conducting the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Undergraduate) exam in all security as the test will be held soon. After the disruption was found to be so bad that the national medical entrance examination scheduled on May 3 has to be canceled due to widespread public outcry when papers were leaked, changes and procedures are being undertaken at a high level.

After the original national medical entrance exam was cancelled from 3 May due to severe levels of disruption and complaints of paper leakage taking place, great administration changes and rules are being established and implemented. The ministry of Defence is actively engaging with the ministry of Education to coordinate for Indian Air Force to convey/ deliver the examination material to the country including the transportation of the students.A major change, the Ministry of Defence has been taking a deeper consultation with the Ministry of Education in view of Indian Air Force’s strategic involvement in transporting or distributing examination papers throughout the country, including that of students.

truck india

A senior meeting of the Ministers held at New Delhi to in-depth review of the entire examination schedule was reported by the Times of India. All the procedures from safe formatting & printing of question papers to the venues were discussed at the venue with the selected faculty members by the top-most assembly including Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia. The main question to be resolved was: Can the use of military aircraft overcome the weaknesses in commercial travel with the aim of protecting the integrity of the June 21 retest?

The intervention of the Dewanulandian position emphasizes that it’s solemn a national level issue. The Telegraph India reports that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is personally overseeing the preparations machinery for the day-to-day operations of the re-examination and getting regular updates as to what measures are in place to ensure the safety of the structures. The presence of the Director General of the National Testing Agency (NTA), out of routine, in these security engagements indicate a whistle-clean change in the SOP.The involvement of an NTA Director General, Abhishek Singh, in these security engagements points towards a change in the SOP that was used earlier.

Such hard manoeuvers are needed due to systemic failures revealed in the early days of May. 

The first test, which went on across more than 550 local and international test centers, attracted almost 2.3 million test takers as reported by The Hindu. However, when the inputs within the institution were verified – followed by investigations into the conditions within the institution – it was revealed that it was an institutional malpractice and leak that had led to the initial results, and subsequently the NTA formally cancelled and retracted those results, and a probe was launched by the Central Bureau of Investigation. The government is trying to reinstate absolute transparency and pupil trust to the hugely-monitored central testing system by bringing in the logistical precision of the Air Force system to the testing system.