The Union government on Saturday, June 22 sacked National Testing Agency (NTA)'s Director General Subodh Kumar Singh amid the ongoing row over alleged irregularities in the NEET and UGC-NET and ordered a CBI investigation into the alleged irregularities in the NEET-UG 2024. India Trade Promotion Organization's Chairman and Managing Director Pradeep Singh Kharola, a retired IAS officer, has been given the additional charge of the post of the DG, NTA. NTA had conducted the NEET-UG on May 5 in the offline OMR mode. "Certain cases of alleged irregularities/cheating/ impersonation/malpractices have been reported. For transparency on the conduct of the examination process, the Ministry of Education, Government of India after a review has decided to entrust the matter to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for comprehensive investigation," the Union government said in a statement.

"The Union government has also enacted the Public Examination (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024, to prevent unfair means in the public examinations and to provide for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto," it added.

The services of Singh have been placed on compulsory wait in the Department of Personnel and Training, according to a notification issued by the Appointments Committee.

The Education Ministry also constituted a high-level committee of experts to make recommendations on reform in the mechanism of the examination process, improvement in data security protocols, structure and functioning of the NTA. 

Recently, the UGC-NET was cancelled just a day after the examinations were conducted. Also, the NTA on Friday announced the postponement of Joint CSIR-UGC-NET, which was scheduled for June 25-27. 

(With inputs from IANS)