A complementary, optional CBT re-exam on 15 July :
— building on NTA's fine preparations for 21 June
===================================================
Respected Shri Dharmendra Pradhan ji,
I read with great satisfaction today's newspaper reports on the thorough and
meticulous preparations being made by the Central and State Governments,
together with the National Testing Agency, to conduct the NEET-UG re-examination
on 21 June 2026 in pen-and-paper mode.
The care being taken to protect the interests of our medical aspirants is
heartening, and I warmly commend the Ministry and NTA for it.
At the same time, I wish to respectfully submit that putting in place a fully digital,
end-to-end encrypted Computer-Based Test (CBT) — the surest safeguard against
paper leaks — is no longer a difficult or time-consuming undertaking.
To put this in concrete terms, I asked Claude (Anthropic's AI) to estimate the
effort involved in building such a secure platform. Its assessment was:
(1) WRITING THE SOFTWARE CODE — approximately 165 man-hours, broadly :
- Core platform and architecture:,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, 8 hrs
- AI-based question generation (180 questions across Physics, Chemistry,
Botany, Zoology): .........................................................24 hrs
- AES-256-GCM encryption module:.................................. 24 hrs
- Exam workflow with timed unlock:.................................. 32 hrs
- Secure e-mail distribution of encrypted papers: ................16 hrs
- Candidate interface and analytics dashboard: ...................48 hrs
- Deployment scripting: ....................................................16 hrs
(2) TESTING, VALIDATION, SECURITY AUDIT AND DEPLOYMENT
— approximately 20 man-days, covering integration and functional testing, an
independent security audit, load testing for concurrent candidates, a pilot run,
and production rollout
With a small team of two to three developers working in parallel, this is
comfortably achievable within five weeks.
And this is not merely theoretical :
a working reference platform, www.ntaNEET.net, already exists and
demonstrates each of these capabilities end-to-end.
In light of the above, I place before you a simple suggestion.
In addition to the pen-and-paper re-exam on 21 June, may NTA also conduct a full
CBT re-exam on 15 July 2026 — strictly on a voluntary, opt-in basis, open only
to those re-exam candidates who wish to appear.
To ensure complete fairness, this CBT would be conducted at NTA-designated
examination centres on computers provided by the Agency — never on candidates'
own devices — so that no aspirant is advantaged or disadvantaged by personal
access to technology or connectivity, and every willing candidate competes on
identical footing.
For any candidate who appears in both, the final marks awarded may be the
higher of the two scores. This protects every student's interest fully, while giving
willing candidates the benefit of a more secure and modern format — and giving
NTA invaluable real-world experience of administering CBT at scale, ahead of any
future transition.
I would be glad to place the www.ntaNEET.net platform and my
associated work at the Ministry's disposal, without any commercial
interest whatsoever, should it be of use.
With deep respect and warm regards,
Hemen Parekh
Mumbai
www.ntaNEET.net | www.my-teacher.in
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