For the Centre, the future of youth is a 'revenue-raising' exercise: Congress

The Congress on Sunday, 4 August, claimed that the National Testing Agency (NTA) had netted a profit of Rs 448 crore in the last six years, alleging that the future of millions of youths was reduced to mere "revenue-raising exercise" by the Narendra Modi government.

Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh shared on X minister of state in the Education Ministry Sukanta Majumdar's reply in the Rajya Sabha on 31 July to a question on the NTA.

"The NTA is at the very heart of the NEET scandal. It is a body of the Education Ministry whose only purpose is to function via outsourcing to private vendors," Ramesh said on X.

"Not only do these vendors very often have dubious credentials but the NTA itself is headed by a person who presided over the Madhya Pradesh Public Service Commission, which has seen mega-scams," Ramesh said.

In an answer to the Rajya Sabha, the Union MoS for education revealed that the NTA collected an estimated Rs 3,512.98 crore, while it spent Rs 3,064.77 crore on the conduct of examinations. "It therefore netted a profit of Rs 448 crore in the last six years," he pointed out.

"This corpus, however, has not been used to build the agency's capabilities to conduct tests itself, or to strengthen regulatory and monitoring capabilities for its vendors," Ramesh said.

"The future of millions of India's youths has ultimately become a mere revenue-raising exercise for the non-biological PM's government," he added.