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A petition filed in the Supreme Court on Wednesday (May 13) seeking to “replace or fundamentally restructure” the National Testing Agency (NTA) has brought the NEET-UG 2026 crisis to a new head.

The petition comes after the NTA cancelled the undergraduate medical entrance exam on Tuesday — nine days after it was held on May 3 — following an alleged paper leak, the first such cancellation since the exam was introduced in 2016. The Centre has handed the probe to the CBI, and the NTA has said a re-exam date will be announced within seven to ten days.

Also read: NEET UG 2026 cancellation: Of shattered dreams and burned-out lives of aspirants

The decision, affecting over 22 lakh candidates, triggered protests by student organisations in Delhi and Kerala and drew sharp criticism from the Opposition, which accused the Modi government of destroying the dreams of an entire generation of medical aspirants.

All roads to Sikar

But as the political storm rages, investigators are closing in on how the leak actually happened — and the trail leads to Sikar, a rapidly growing coaching town in Rajasthan’s Shekhawati region.

What began as a “guess paper” of around 410 questions, allegedly printed in Nashik, wound its way through Haryana, Jaipur and the town of Jamwa Ramgarh before landing in Sikar — roughly 115 km from Jaipur — where it spread through paid WhatsApp groups, coaching institutes and student hostels.

The Rajasthan Special Operations Group (SOG) has detained over 15 people and arrested the alleged mastermind, Manish Yadav, as it unravels a network that stretched from Kerala to Jammu and Kashmir. At the centre of it all is Sikar: a town that has quietly transformed into one of India’s most significant medical entrance coaching hubs, and is now at the heart of the country’s most damaging exam scandal.

How it began

Sources told The Federal that a medical student from Kerala sent a handwritten “guess paper” — a question bank containing over 410 questions — to his father, who runs a paying guest (PG) accommodation for girl students in Sikar.

The father distributed it among the residents and passed it on to a coordinator at a local coaching institute, who immediately noticed striking similarities with the actual NEET question paper. According to Rajasthan Police Additional Director General Vishal Bansal, the guess paper was in circulation at least 15 days before the exam.

The alleged leak came to light when the coordinator turned whistleblower, having found that at least 120 of the 410 questions matched the final paper word for word — including the sequence of questions and the arrangement of answer options. The Chemistry section alone had 35 exact matches, with the Biology section contributing further. Together, these questions accounted for 600 marks out of NEET’s total 720.

Quick passage of paper

The guess paper spread rapidly through WhatsApp groups, Telegram channels, PG accommodations and career counsellors. It was reportedly sold for Rs 5 lakh on the first day, but as it passed through multiple hands, the price fell sharply to Rs 30,000.

Alarmed by the exact matches between the guess paper and the actual question paper, the PG owner approached the local police station in Sikar’s Udyog Nagar — only to be turned away, with officers dismissing his complaint as rumour without solid proof.

The matter escalated after an email detailing the similarities between the guess paper and the actual NEET UG 2026 question paper was sent directly to the NTA. The NTA subsequently alerted the Intelligence Bureau (IB), which conducted a preliminary inquiry before contacting the Rajasthan Special Operations Group (SOG).

SOG hits the roads

The SOG swung into action immediately, visiting various coaching institutes in Sikar and questioning nearly 150 people, including the owners, teachers and coordinators.

The team detained Sikar-based counsellor Rakesh Kumar Mandawariya, suspected of being a key figure in circulating the paper. Mandawariya runs SK Consultancy on Piprali Road in Sikar. He had left his village 15 years ago after briefly pursuing a Bachelor of Dental Surgery degree before pivoting to the education counselling business.

The SOG also detained 15 others, including Manish Yadav from Jaipur, believed to be one of the key architects of the leak.

How the paper travelled

Investigators are piecing together how the guess paper travelled such a distance before reaching Sikar. According to sources, it was allegedly printed in Nashik, from where it made its way to Haryana and then to Jaipur. From Jaipur, it reached Jamwa Ramgarh, a town around 115 km from Sikar, where two brothers, Dinesh and Mangilal, are believed to have received it around April 26-27.

The brothers, said to have political connections and a family member who cleared NEET the previous year, allegedly circulated it across several paid WhatsApp groups and channels popular among students in Sikar.

Also read: NEET exam fear: When pressure leads to tragedy; students reveal ordeal

During the investigation, the CBI identified a group called “Private Mafia” where the guess paper was shared among members who had paid large sums to access it. From Sikar, the leak spread pan-India, with the paper reportedly reaching students across states from Kerala to Jammu and Kashmir. By the time authorities moved in, most of the coaching institute owners implicated in the scandal had already fled the city.

The coaching city of Sikar

Sikar, located in the Shekhawati region and known for its rich intricately designed heritage havelis with fresco art, has rapidly transformed into a coaching Agrimushrooming with hundreds of coaching centres, career counsellors and student accommodations over the last few years.

Each year, at least 2 to 3 lakh students flock to this small town to take coaching for NEET, JEE and government recruitment exams. The coaching ecosystem in Sikar is estimated to contribute significantly to the district’s GDP — 30-35 per cent of Sikar’s economy is directly or indirectly dependent on these educational institutes.

Also read: Beyond NEET: Exploring alternative careers in medicine

Often referred to as ‘next Kota’, Sikar is now an emerging destination for medical entrance coaching. It offers a lower cost of living and more affordable tuition fees. The cut-throat competitiveness and the big city attractions of Kota are yet to hit Sikar, convincing parents that their children have a better study atmosphere.

The Sikar edge

The institute owners in Sikar claim that, unlike Kota, their study centres offers a one-to-one connect with the students, many of whom hail from rural backgrounds.

A report based on NTA results data, submitted to the Supreme Court regarding NEET-UG 2024, highlighted that Sikar has a significantly higher selection ratio in NEET compared to the national average. In 2024, approximately 7.48 per cent of students from Sikar scored 650+, while the national average stood at 1.3 per cent.

Also read | ‘Killer’ tag leaves Kota’s economy tottering; will city ace this test?

Ashfaq Kamkhyani, a Sikar-based political analyst, told The Federal that most of the students there are from rural Rajasthan. “There are hundreds of coaching institutes and career counselling centres here. These institutes run their own school or have tie-ups with schools, so that there is a constant flow of students, mostly from rural belts of Rajasthan,” he said.

“The most attractive thing for students here is that some of the institutes and career counsellors reserve medical seats in colleges abroad, like Ukraine, China, Russia and Bangladesh,” he added. These arrangements come in handy when the students are unable to clear NEET. The counsellors advise them to try their luck abroad, where the students need only the qualifying marks of NEET, which went as low as 144 out of 720 last year, KamKhyani explained.

Rajasthan’s paper leak trail

The latest row adds to Rajasthan’s long history of paper leaks. The leak of the Rajasthan Eligibility for Elementary Teachers (REET) paper snowballed into a major political flashpoint during the 2023 Assembly elections, when the then-opposition BJP rallied around this malpractice.

There were huge protests by students over these leaks that supposedly impacted over 1.3 crore students. It led to the cancellation of several major recruitment exams.

The scale of the leaks was massive, with the SOG registering 19 FIRs against over 320 accused during this period.

There were also paper leaks in many government recruitment exams like REET level-2, Senior Teacher Grade II, Police Sub-inspector (SI) recruitment exam and others.

Also read: Jolted by suicides, Kota brings reforms to woo back JEE, NEET aspirants

Investigations had exposed a deep nexus between high-ranking Rajasthan Public Service Commission officials and coaching centres.

NEET-UG 2024 controversy

Two years ago, a huge controversy had engulfed NEET-UG 2024, leading to nationwide protests, multiple Supreme Court hearings and a CBI probe. When results were declared on June 4, 2024, an unprecedented 67 students writing with one exam centre in Faridabad had achieved 720/720, compared to just two in 2023. This triggered a huge row.

Allegations of paper leaks also surfaced in Patna and Godhra. The Supreme Court refused to cancel the exam, stating there was no evidence of a “systematic breach” that affected the integrity of the whole exam.