SHILLONG, JUN 25: Meghalaya Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) Chairman In-charge Social Media Langkupar War on Thursday said the state bears a heavier burden of India’s education crisis, with national failures in exams and funding hitting students here “more cost, more travel, more dependence on the very support being cut”.
“4,164 Meghalaya students re-sat NEET across 14 centres. The state depends on Samagra Shiksha at a 90:10 ratio and has among the lowest school-computer access in India. National failures land harder here,” War said while calling the NEET-UG 2026 controversy a “symptom, not the disease”.
He argued that the cancellation and re-conduct of NEET-UG 2026 on June 21 at 5,440 centres for over 22 lakh students exposed deeper systemic cracks.
“NEET decides who becomes a doctor; when its gateway is compromised, trust in the whole system is shaken,” War said, citing Reuters reports that more than two million aspirants faced severe distress competing for seats at a 5-6% success rate.The MPCC leader targeted the National Testing Agency’s track record, saying credibility has repeatedly collapsed.
“The NTA promised ‘error free delivery’. Instead we got the NEET-UG 2024 leak that the Supreme Court said was ‘not in dispute’ with around 155 suspected beneficiaries, UGC-NET 2024 cancelled, CUET-UG 2026 rescheduled, and UGC-NET 2026 re-tested,” he said.
He quoted the Supreme Court’s May 2026 observation that the agency “has not learnt its lesson yet,” and referred to media reports of CBI arrests that included NTA-appointed subject experts.War said legislation has not translated into reform.
“The government passed the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act in June 2024 promising to end paper leaks. The 2026 leak still happened. A law is not a reform if the exam architecture remains weak,” he said.
He also flagged what he called “centralisation without accountability” in education, noting that NEET and CUET concentrate power in Delhi despite education being a shared Centre-State subject. “In FY 2024-25, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal received no Samagra Shiksha funds amid the PM-SHRI MoU dispute. Money meant for government school children was used as a lever,” War added.
He said chronic underfunding has forced families into a costly coaching cycle.
“Public education spending is 4.12% of GDP against the NEP’s 6% target. The 2024-25 Education Budget was cut 7%, higher education 17%, and the UGC’s allocation about 61%. Starved public systems push families into private coaching and loans – turning a fair exam into a market,” War said.
On scholarships, he said the discontinuation of pre-matric support for six notified minority communities, including Christians, from Classes I-VIII since 2022-23, along with scrapping of the Maulana Azad National Fellowship and Padho Pardesh, has hit poor minority students hardest, including in Meghalaya.
He clarified that ST scholarship schemes remain separate.
Citing Rajya Sabha data showing 8,46,647 teaching posts vacant in 2023-24 and a parliamentary panel warning the gap is close to 10 lakh, War said “empty posts mean larger classes, multi-grade teaching, learning gaps and higher dropout, worst in rural and tribal schools”.
He referenced ASER 2024 to note that only about 23.4% of Class 3 children in government schools could read a Class 2 text. “Better than 2022, but still roughly three in four below level. Enrolment is not the same as learning,” he said.
With computer-based NEET planned from 2027, War pointed to UDISE+ 2024-25 data showing 64.7% of schools have computers and 63.5% have internet nationally, while Meghalaya lags at around 19.7%.
“Computer-based NEET on unequal infrastructure shifts the disadvantage onto rural and hill students,” he warned. He added that UDISE+ recorded 8.2% dropout at the secondary stage, 1.04 lakh single-teacher schools and nearly 8,000 zero-enrolment schools, meaning “many poor students never reach the entrance-exam stage at all”.
On higher education, War said allocations fell 17% and the UGC’s share dropped about 61%.
With Gross Enrolment Ratio at 28.4% against the NEP’s 50%-by-2035 target and central university faculty vacancies at 25-28%, he said “starved universities raise fees and push students to private loans”.
He concluded that “an exam-obsessed, coaching-driven, underfunded system trains memorisation, not skills. Students compete fiercely for scarce seats, then emerge into scarce jobs”.
By Our Reporter
