New Delhi | The National Testing Agency (NTA) has issued an advisory to NEET-UG 2026 candidates and their parents, warning them not to submit fake or AI-generated OMR sheets when raising complaints about score discrepancies.
The warning comes after the NTA reviewed several complaints regarding differences between candidates' expected and declared NEET 2026 scores.
During the verification process, the agency found that many Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) sheets submitted with complaints appeared fake or created using artificial intelligence (AI).
“The NTA is closely monitoring and scrutinising all complaints. In the wake of many OMR sheets submitted for scrutiny turning out to be fake/AI-generated, students and parents are advised to submit only original OMR sheets for scrutiny. Any fake/AI-generated OMR sheet may invite legal action against the complainant,” the agency said in the advisory.
The results for the national medical entrance examination were announced on July 16, with 11.21 lakh candidates qualifying the test.
Some candidates and parents have alleged mismatches between expected and declared scores. The allegations, spreading rapidly on social media, have also been picked up by the opposition parties for questioning the credibility of the NTA, which has already faced considerable flak over paper leak allegations.
Fresh claims nonetheless surfaced on Sunday as the NTA's verification continued.
The Congress raised the issue of a candidate, Avaneesh Srivastava, who claimed that his re-NEET answer sheet had been replaced with that of another individual, Ajeet Singh.
“The representation received from the candidate’s family has been examined on merits. The image being circulated on social media is not the OMR sheet on record with the NTA. It is a digitally altered version. ‘Ajeet Singh, son of Lakhan Singh and Reena Singh’ does not correspond to any candidate registered for NEET-UG 2026,” an NTA official said.
Another aspirant, Arya Singh, claimed in a video that, based on the original OMR sheet issued by the NTA, in which there were issues with the sequencing of question numbers, she was scoring 609 marks, which she said was rectified by the NTA.
However, on the result day, she was accorded 540 and later on her results changed to 167 marks.
The video was shared by Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, saying, “NEET hai ya CHEAT hai?”
NTA officials, however, termed the OMR sheet being circulated about Singh's claim fake.
On May 12, the NTA cancelled the NEET-UG 2026 conducted on May 3 amid allegations of paper leak; the exam was re-conducted on June 21. The CBI is probing the matter.
Following the controversy over paper leak and alleged irregularities in the exam process, the Centre announced that NEET will now be conducted as a computer-based test (CBT) instead of the pen-and-paper mode.
Detailed deliberations have been ongoing for several years between the education and health ministries on whether to conduct NEET-UG in pen-and-paper or online mode.
The National Eligibility cum Entrance Test-Undergraduate (NEET-UG) is the country's largest undergraduate entrance exam, with nearly 25 lakh candidates registering annually.
The NTA conducts the test every year for admission into medical colleges, where 108,000 seats are available for the MBBS course. Of these, approximately 56,000 are in government hospitals and about 52,000 in private colleges.
Undergraduate courses in dentistry, Ayurveda, Unani and Siddha also utilise NEET results for admissions.
