UGC-NET was conducted on Tuesday and there were social media posts soon after, alleging that the question paper had been leaked.
Cancellation of UGC-NET within 24 hours was not a “knee-jerk reaction, Pradhan said. “Based on information from the National Cyber Crime Threat Analytics Unit of Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), prima facie it was found that there were question papers in the darknet. Papers were also being circulated on Telegram (messaging platform),” he said.
The question papers were found to be authentic when matched with the original. Therefore the exams had to be cancelled to safeguard the interest of the aspirants.”
The dark web is an encrypted portion of the internet not visible to the general public via a traditional search engine such as Google. Also known as the darknet, the dark web constitutes a large part of illegal activity on the internet.
More than 11 lakh students had registered for UGC-NET. Earlier in the day, Govind Jaiswal, joint secretary in the ministry of education, said a fresh exam will be conducted soon. However, no timeline was announced.
