New Delhi: What was meant to be a standardised gateway to higher education has instead turned into a logistical nightmare for thousands of candidates. Test centres for the Common University Entrance Test-Undergraduate 2026, scheduled to be conducted between 11 and 31 May, seem to have been assigned at random.
On 29 April, the National Testing Agency released the city intimation slip for the CUET-UG examination. And of the 15,68,866 candidates, 3.4 per cent have been assigned centres that are unreasonably far away from their choice of locations, according to the NTA.
A wave of “centre-allotment chaos” has swept the country, leaving students and parents grappling with excessive anxiety, travel costs and misplaced priorities.
With the release of admit cards yesterday, their creeping anxieties hardened into a grim reality; they are now forced to scramble for last-minute travel arrangements to distant cities just to sit for an exam.
“It is costing me more than Rs 40,000 just to go to Jaipur. Because it’s a major tourist hub and we are in the peak season,” said Akshay Sharma, a candidate residing in Sector-20, Panchkula, Haryana.
Despite filling Mohali, a half-hour drive from his hometown, as his first preference, he was allotted a centre in Jaipur. “I have mailed and tweeted at NTA’s official handles multiple times, but there has been no response from their end,” he added.
Sharma’s case is just one example of NTA’s systemic oversight.
For Sonam, a resident of Leh, Ladakh, the release of the admit card confirmed her worst-case scenario: A cross-country trek to a testing centre in Rohini, New Delhi.
“I was hoping I would get allotted Leh because it would’ve saved me the cost of travelling,” she said.
Social media is flooded with reels about the NTA’s mismanagement and frantic tweets from students who have been allocated centres thousands of kilometres away from their home states.
Students are sharing screenshots of their preferences lists along with their final allotments, highlighting a complete disregard for the “nearest centre” policy the NTA typically promises.
Also read: Free education is mere jugglery of words. A hangover of anti-rational pre-Partition days
CUET’s missteps
This isn’t the first time the NTA has come under fire. CUET has been tainted by server crashes, last-minute cancellations, and delayed results.
There has been a surge in applicants this year, crossing the 15 lakh mark for the first time this year.
An assistant professor from one of the city colleges affiliated with Panjab University, Chandigarh, told ThePrint that a national exam of this cadre requires good infrastructure at the ground level. “Allocating centres this far, especially to girls, is unsafe, and when the students are paying the fees, it’s the responsibility of NTA to meet the candidates’ expectations.”
“If UGC can do it, then why can’t NTA?” she asked.
As per the latest press release by NTA on 5 May, the agency has opened a reallocation window specifically for candidates who were not allotted their preferred cities due to capacity constraints. This window, on the official portal of NTA, allows students to choose from vacant slots in “alternate cities” on a first-come, first-served basis.
For those whose subject combinations or specific shifts have no remaining vacancies in their home regions, and for the students who have already received their admit cards, the reallocation isn’t a viable option. It leaves them with no choice but to follow through with their original, far-flung allotments.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)