Retired civil servants seek Pradhan's exit over NEET, CBSE controversies

A group of 73 retired civil servants has called for the resignation of Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, holding him politically accountable for the controversies surrounding the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) and the recent problems in the evaluation of CBSE Class 12 examinations.

In an open letter issued on 10 June, the Constitutional Conduct Group (CCG), a collective of retired members of the All India Services and Central Services, said the repeated failures in the conduct of national-level examinations had "shattered the dreams and futures of millions of young Indians" and severely undermined public trust in the country's education system.

The signatories include several prominent former bureaucrats and diplomats, among them former Delhi lieutenant-governor Najeeb Jung, former chief election commissioner Ashok Lavasa, former foreign secretary and national security adviser Shivshankar Menon, former information commissioner Wajahat Habibullah and former Punjab DGP Julio Ribeiro.

The group said the integrity of India's apex testing and evaluation bodies stood "completely compromised", citing the recurring controversies surrounding NEET examinations and the recent rollout of CBSE's On Screen Marking (OSM) system.

Referring to the NEET-UG examination, the letter said repeated paper leaks had undermined the aspirations of more than 23 lakh students and raised serious questions about the functioning of the National Testing Agency (NTA).

"We are amazed that, every year, for several years, the same kind of flaws continue to occur in the NEET examination," the letter said, arguing that candidates continued to gain prior access to question papers through leaks made possible by "bribes and chicanery".

The retired officials also criticised what they described as the Union government's excessive reliance on centralised testing systems, arguing that repeated requests from states such as Tamil Nadu for greater autonomy in admissions had been ignored.

The letter also focused on the troubled implementation of CBSE's digital evaluation system for Class 12 board examinations this year. According to the group, the transition was marred by portal crashes, missing digital pages, answer sheet mismatches and evaluation errors, particularly in science and mathematics subjects.

The signatories alleged that inadequate testing and oversight had contributed to the problems and questioned the process through which the technology contractor was selected. They claimed that changes were made to tender conditions on multiple occasions, ultimately enabling a company that had previously been blacklisted by the Telangana government to secure the contract.

The group said the subsequent transfer of the CBSE chairman and secretary did not address larger questions of policy and accountability.

"We do not believe that the CBSE Chairman and Secretary alone could have been solely responsible for changing the tender conditions. There must have been some interest expressed from higher up," the letter said.

Drawing parallels with earlier instances of ministerial resignations following major public failures, the CCG cited the resignations of Lal Bahadur Shastri after railway accidents in 1956, Madhavrao Scindia following an air crash in 1993, Nitish Kumar after a railway accident in 1999 and Shivraj Patil after the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.

"The same responsibility for the present lapses rests now on the Union Education Minister," the group said.

The letter demanded Pradhan's immediate resignation or removal by the Prime Minister, a time-bound independent review of both the NTA and CBSE evaluation systems, and the adoption of stronger security measures and third-party audits for examination and evaluation platforms.

"The future of our nation depends entirely on the fairness, transparency, and integrity of its education system," the signatories said, expressing solidarity with students and families affected by the controversies.

Source: Open letter by the Constitutional Conduct Group dated 10 June 2026.