National Testing Agency (NTA) has canceled the NEET 2026 exam scheduled to be held on May 3. This decision has been taken due to suspicion of paper leak. New exam dates will be announced soon. NTA has said that this examination has been canceled after the approval of the Central Government. This case will be investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
Fees will be refunded; No need to re-register
NTA has clarified that students will not need to re-register for the examination. Apart from this, there will be no change in the already decided examination centres. New admit cards will be issued for the re-examination. Also, the examination fees of the students who had given the examination will also be refunded.
The National Testing Agency, with the approval of the Government of India, has decided to cancel the NEET (UG) 2026 examination held on 3 May 2026 and reschedule the examination on dates to be intimated separately. pic.twitter.com/HyJf5qYcNi
— ANI_HindiNews (@AHindinews) May 12, 2026
The investigation will start from May 8, 2026
NTA informed that on May 8, 2026, some investigations related to this matter were handed over to central agencies to ensure fairness and security of the examination process. Now, based on the information received from the testing agencies and the approval of the government, NTA has decided to cancel the NEET (UG) exam held on May 3, 2026 and re-conduct it. New exam dates will be announced later. Based on the reports submitted by the investigating agencies, it was decided that the existing examination process cannot be continued. Therefore, the exam will be conducted again to maintain transparency.
Handwritten ‘guessing papers’ found in Rajasthan
NEET UG 2026 exam was conducted on May 3 across the country. It is suspected that the paper was leaked even before the exam started. In Rajasthan, handwritten ‘guessing papers’ were found in the possession of many students, whose questions matched the real exam paper. On 10 May, based on intelligence, Rajasthan Special Operations Group (SOG) detained 13 suspects from Dehradun, Sikar and Jhunjhunu. These include a career counselor associated with a coaching institute in Sikar.
Questions of 600 marks out of 720 were the same
Investigation has revealed that questions worth 600 marks out of 720 in the examination had reached the students of Sikar only two days before the examination. Notably, on May 1, a student studying MBBS in a college in Kerala had sent a “guess paper” to a friend in Sikar.
Students received handwritten question papers*
SOG (Special Operations Group) is currently investigating the matter. The agency is collecting every clue to identify and arrest the mastermind behind this entire operation. The social media chats and call logs of all the suspects are being thoroughly investigated. In fact, this material was distributed as a “guess paper” and SOG is currently investigating whether this is a formal paper leak or not. The “question bank” reached to the students contained more than 300 questions from Physics, Chemistry and Biology. All these questions were handwritten, and the surprising thing is that they all appeared to be written in the same handwriting. Of these, 150 questions appeared exactly in the real exam of NEET UG 2026. According to experts, it is possible for some questions from a particular “guess paper” to match the exam exactly, but it is very unusual – and usually impossible – for such a large number of questions to match the actual paper.
Paper leak incident in 2024
Even in 2024, NEET UG exam was canceled at some centers due to paper leak. This examination was originally scheduled to be held on 5 May 2024. On 6 May, NTA (National Testing Agency) initially denied that any paper had been leaked. Subsequently, investigation was conducted in Bihar (Patna) and Jharkhand (Hazaribagh). The investigation found evidence of paper leakage and this led to several arrests.
However, the Supreme Court refused to cancel the entire examination; Instead, the exam was re-conducted for 1,539 candidates at certain centres. Apart from the allegations of paper leak, two more issues also sparked considerable controversy: 67 students scoring 720 out of 720, and multiple top-ranked candidates appearing from the same exam centre.