Parliament on Thursday passed the Bill to amend the anti-paper leak law, aiming to make it more stringent.
The Rajya Sabha took up the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill, 2026, in the afternoon. The Lok Sabha had passed the amendment on Wednesday.
Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office Jitendra Singh, who piloted the bill, said the government has brought this amendment in right earnest and was open to constructive suggestions from all quarters.
Earlier, several Opposition members in the Rajya Sabha demanded that the government should do away with the National Testing Agency (NTA), which conducts the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), while the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) urged the government to scrap the NEET medical entrance test itself.
In his speech, independent MP Kapil Sibal said the protests over the NEET “paper leak” were an “igniting factor”, and the real question concerns not only the state of education but also the job market. He flagged the high number of vacancies of professors, associate professors and assistant professors in the country’s Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Management and Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research. He said 81 per cent of the students enrolled in higher education cannot get jobs.
Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge said that unless the institutions and the examination system are reformed and accountability is fixed, paper leaks will continue to occur, and “we will be discussing the same thing here again.”
DMK member Tiruchi Siva demanded the scrapping of the NEET examination, while All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK)’s M Thambidurai blamed coaching centres for the growing menace of paper leaks and urged the government to bring a separate law to regulate or abolish them.
BJP’s Sudhanshu Trivedi said the language that the protesters used was unfortunate. He said the reason Instagram and other social media platforms were being offered free was because they want to capture the minds of India’s youth. Janata Dal United’s Sanjay Jha said that Union Home Minister Amit Shah should get it probed as to who were the elements trying to hijack students’ protest.
Rashtriya Janata Dal MP Manoj Kumar Jha demanded that the “source of the disease” of the NEET “paper leak”, the NTA should be thrown into the Bay of Bengal. Samajwadi Party’s Ram Gopal Yadav said that the total sanctioned posts in the NTA are 39 and 15 of them are vacant. Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s John Brittas said that creation of the committee under Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani to revamp the exam system is proof of the tendency to form “committee, after committee”, which is the “biggest crisis” of this country. He claimed that the annual turnover of the coaching industry is ₹1.4 trillion. The discussion on the bill continued in the RS till late evening.
In a related development, Bharatiya Janata Party Lok Sabha MP Anurag Thakur submitted a notice of breach of privilege and contempt of the House to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla against Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi for what he termed as “use of unparliamentary and derogatory language and levelling grave and unsubstantiated allegations” against Home Minister Amit Shah.
In his social media posts on Thursday, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi demanded a Supreme Court-monitored probe into the alleged police excesses against students during the NEET paper leak protests. He questioned why Union Home Minister Shah has not made a statement in Parliament on the “brutal violence” against students. The BJP hit back, accusing Gandhi of telling a “bundle of lies and demanded he apologise for “misusing” the House by making “baseless” allegations.
Parliament on Thursday also passed the bill that makes any insult to the national song Vande Mataram a punishable offence with Lok Sabha clearing the legislation amid din. The Rajya Sabha passed the Prevention of Insults to National Honour (Amendment) Bill, 2026 on Wednesday. Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK)’s K Kanimozhi opposed the bill, saying it is a “Hindutva agenda” masquerading as nationalism, and that it is against federalism.
In other developments related to the protests, activist Sonam Wangchuk welcomed the anti-paper leak bill, praised the Delhi to Srinagar Vande Bharat train and described the journey, including crossing the Chenab rail bridge, as a “very beautiful experience”. “I would like to appeal to the government that the agreements that were made, first with me in writing and then with the CJP, that they will not carry out any legal action on the students in the demonstration, that they will not carry out any FIRs, that they should remain steadfast on it, follow it, and create an environment of trust in the country, especially among the youth generation,” he said.
