New Delhi: Outsourcing appears to be the only job of the National Testing Agency (NTA), Congress said on Saturday after his Rajya Sabha colleague and TMC MP Sagarika Ghose flagged the alleged paucity of information regarding the autonomous body on its website.
In a post on X, Jairam Ramesh, Congress general secretary in charge of communications, said, “The only job of NTA appears to be to outsource. Its Chairman has a very dubious record as Chairman of the Madhya Pradesh Public Service Commission.”
On Friday, TMC MP Sagarika Ghose wrote to education minister Dharmendra Pradhan asking why the NTA – responsible for 17 major examinations including the NEET – gives “so little information about itself” on its website.
“Who are the officials? Where are NTA’s annual reports? To win public trust for future exams NTA must provide more information about itself on its website,” Ghose wrote on X while sharing a copy of the letter.
Ghose claimed that all offices of the NTA share only two landline numbers and that only three names of the governing body have been made available on its website.
“Examinations must be, above all, totally trustworthy and the agency that conducts them must be above all suspicion. Students should not have to approach the courts for redress and every examination conducted by the NTA should not be plagued by doubt and uncertainty,” the letter read.
The TMC leader requested Pradhan to urgently update the NTA website with all the names of its board members and officials along with their qualifications. She demanded that the annual reports and audited accounts of the NTA should also be uploaded on the website.
“Such steps would go a long way in establishing the trustworthiness of the NTA in the eyes of the public,” Ghose added.
The NTA has been under fire over paper leaks and irregularities detected in multiple entrance examinations.
