NEW DELHI: The Centre has brought in three senior officers, including an IPS officer, at the National Testing Agency (NTA), giving the embattled examination body fresh administrative muscle as it undergoes one of its biggest personnel and security overhauls following controversies over NEET-UG and UGC-NET.IPS officer Ravi Kumar Singh and IAS officer Prasanna Venkatesh V have been appointed directors at NTA, while Amit Samdariya, a 2016-batch Indian Revenue Service (customs and indirect taxes) officer, will join as joint director. The appointments were cleared through separate personnel ministry orders dated August 27.The induction comes days after NTA began a wider revamp that includes removing around 600 experts from its examination panels, onboarding a fresh set of specialists and introducing a four-tier scrutiny mechanism for question papers. The agency is also strengthening examination security, recruiting additional officials and moving to new premises where security is proposed to be reinforced with CISF deployment. The measures were reviewed recently by Union education minister Pralhad Joshi as the govt sought to tighten both the academic and operational ends of the examination process.
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NTA has been under sustained pressure since the NEET-UG paper leak controversy, which triggered nationwide protests and intensified scrutiny of how high-stakes examinations are secured and administered.More recently, it was forced to order fresh UGC-NET examinations in english, commerce and sociology after multiple errors and repeated questions were detected in the June papers, adding a question-paper quality problem to its security challenges.The personnel ministry has directed all three officers to take charge within three weeks.
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