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New Delhi: The NEET-UG 2025 may have gone incident-free after the 2024 question paper leak fiasco, but internal government assessment has pointed to several gaps in the conduct of the medical examination, especially the CCTV surveillance efficiency, ET has learnt.
ET gathers that central institutes monitoring the exam flagged non-functional CCTVs, blurred feeds and poor strong-room coverage, along with login issues, limited access to camera feeds and weak invigilation that left students seated too close.Fixes Likely for NEET-UG 2026
It is gathered the NEET-UG 2026 may reflect some of the changes from the lessons learnt in 2025.
The National Testing Agency (NTA) has been asked to look at the CCTV coverage, positioning and their functioning status on priority basis, besides increased access to CCTV feeds for higher virtual surveillance. The Union education ministry, following the 2024 NEET-UG controversy, had brought in an additional layer of monitoring in 2025 through central government institutes to supplement AI-based CCTV surveillance of exam centres. But their assessments are worrisome.
TN Centres Show Missing Feeds, Strong-Room Blind Spots
IIT-Madras, which was monitoring the conduct of exams at Tamil Nadu’s 30-plus centres, reported “no camera feed available” in at least nine centres and 60 exam rooms, strong room cameras not giving feed or facing the floor and so on, ET has reliably learnt.
Karnataka Reports Non-Functional CCTVs, Limited Logins
IISc Bangalore reported CCTVs not working at some centres, lack of coverage at strong rooms and frisking areas and a single login ID given to monitor 381 centers.
NITTTR Chandigarh, monitoring Punjab, found “no CCTV cameras working in 10 centres”, less than 50% CCTV cameras working at one centre during the test time and the inability to monitor another centre due to “absence of feed from 39 CCTV cameras.” The packing activity after the test also could not be observed at all due to non-availability of live feed from CCTV cameras of 35 centres, NITTTR Chandigarh submitted to the education ministry.
In Haryana too, the NITTTR reported absence of camera feeds of strong rooms in various centres. It also noted 36 reports of dead cameras, 17 reports of no camera feed besides 13 different reports of frisking areas not being visible.
Kerala’s ‘Offline ‘ Cameras
IISER Thiruvananthapuram, monitoring Kerala and Lakshadweep, flagged that CCTV cameras were “offline throughout the examination” for the Lakshadweep centre. In Kerala too, several cameras were found non-functional.
The scenario is repeated across states.
NE Centres Flag Seal Checks
NIT Meghalaya found several technical issues with CCTVs, pointing to how the exam paper box was not opened in front of CCTV, and question paper seal not seen properly on CCTV
IIT Gandhinagar red-flagged “non-functional CCTV cameras at various centres” while MNIT Jaipur said 10% of the 12,000 CCTVs were not working at times and 700-800 were non-functional “all the time”. IIM Mumbai noted how real-time monitoring of strong rooms was “unavailable in significant numbers of centres” and biometric and frisking areas were also largely uncovered by CCTVs.
The University of Hyderabad, monitoring NEET-UG 2025 centres in Telangana, reported non-functional CCTVs at some centres, blurry images, improperly positioned cameras, poor screen-camera check interface and so on. Central Tribal University of Andhra Pradesh pointed to inadequate exam infrastructure, lapses in invigilation duties and delayed submission of answer sheets.
Bihar, J&K, Bengal Continue to Show Streaming Failures
In Bihar, which was the hotspot in 2024 over the question paper leak row, IIT Patna also pointed to problems with CCTV streaming which were flagged to the NTA.
IIT Kharagpur also noted CCTV feeds missing in some cities of West Bengal and intermittent transmission in some cases.
