Weeks of protests over leaked question papers in India's National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), the country's main medical entrance exam, forced the resignation of education minister Dharmendra Pradhan and prompted Prime Minister Narendra Modi to set up an expert task force, led by Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani, to overhaul the National Testing Agency. Modi has proposed switching to computer-based testing to improve security, but India's Supreme Court, while welcoming the reform effort, warned that digitising exams alone would not stop leaks, since the underlying problem is one of trust, governance and incentives rather than technology.

Comparing NEET leaks in 2024 and 2026 shows why the fix is not straightforward: in 2024 the paper was reportedly leaked after printing, when sealed trunks were opened in transit, a breach investigators said involved only 40-50 people and which the Supreme Court ruled did not compromise the exam overall. In 2026, the leak allegedly occurred earlier, from within the NTA itself, with teachers accused of leaking the paper before it left the system. Task force member Professor V Kamakoti of IIT Madras says trust ultimately rests with the teachers who set papers and the invigilators who supervise candidates, and while CCTV and AI monitoring could strengthen invigilation, he argues computer-based testing—drawing on more than a decade of experience running large-scale digital exams—would make the system significantly harder to compromise. Protesters say more than 20 students have died by suicide, which their families link to the exam scandal.