The Proposal to Put the NTA on a Statutory Footing

The proposal to put the NTA on a statutory footing

The agency is a society, not a statutory body

The National Testing Agency is registered as a society under an Act of 1860. It was registered on 15 May 2018 and has no statute of its own setting out its duties.

It runs exams at enormous scale

By July 2024 the agency reported more than 240 examinations and more than 5.4 crore candidates. NEET UG 2026 alone drew 22.79 lakh registrations by its own count.

Most of its people are not its own

Of 194 disclosed personnel in July 2024, 171 were on contract or outsourced. That is about 88 per cent, so roughly nine in every ten were not permanent staff.

The proposal is an Act of Parliament

SBI Research proposed on 30 September 2026 that the agency be made a statutory body by law, with its duties, its reporting and its responsibility for contractors written in.

Question setting would come in house

Under the proposal the agency would run question design, scoring, core technology, security and candidate support itself, rather than hand that work to outside firms.

A charter would set fixed deadlines

The proposal adds a charter with public deadlines for answer key challenges, score corrections, delays and re-tests, and exam accounts that the national auditor checks.

Want to know what has changed already?

Our report on the security overhaul at the National Testing Agency covers the new facility, the armed deployment and the court case that is still running.