A last-minute admit card error in the NEET-UG 2026 re-examination has triggered a political row after a medical aspirant from Nagpur found his exam centre listed nearly 4,000 kilometres away — in Abu Dhabi.
The student, Abdullah Mohammad Talib, discovered the mix-up on Thursday afternoon when he downloaded his admit card just days ahead of the scheduled re-test on June 21. Instead of a centre in his home city, the document showed an examination venue in the United Arab Emirates, leaving the family scrambling with barely 48 hours to respond.
The National Testing Agency (NTA), which conducts the all-India medical entrance exam, acknowledged the error and described it as a “technical glitch” in its centre-allocation system. After the family raised the issue and it gained traction online, the agency moved quickly to correct it, reallotting the student to PM SHRI Kendriya Vidyalaya, Ajni, a centre in Nagpur itself. Talib was able to appear for the re-exam at the corrected venue on Sunday.
The episode quickly became fodder for political criticism. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi seized on the incident, accusing the Modi government of mishandling an examination process that determines the academic futures of hundreds of thousands of students each year. “A system that cannot provide a student with a centre in their own city — and instead assigns one abroad — has no right to conduct examinations,” Gandhi said, adding that authorities should “stop gambling” with students’ futures.
The NTA has not detailed how the allocation error occurred, though officials suggested it stemmed from a backend processing fault rather than a deliberate assignment. The agency has faced repeated scrutiny over the past two years following allegations of irregularities in NEET-UG administration, ranging from paper leaks to inconsistent centre logistics, and this latest episode is likely to renew calls for an audit of its systems ahead of future exam cycles.
For now, the immediate crisis has passed — Talib sat for his re-exam in Nagpur as intended — but the incident has reopened a familiar debate in India over the reliability of centralised testing infrastructure for an exam that decides admission to medical colleges for millions of aspirants nationwide.
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