On June 5, 2026, two days after the first reports emerged about Akanksha Chaturvedi – a NEET aspirant from Madhya Pradesh who died by suicide after her exam was cancelled due to a paper leak – Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s X feed had other priorities. Birthday wishes for CM Yogi Adityanath. Applause for PM Modi’s #EkPedMaaKeNaam campaign. The usual.

Just weeks ago, the CBSE’s Class 12 re-evaluation process had run into its own controversy, with serious questions raised by students around the tendering process and cybersecurity vulnerabilities.

But looking at the minister’s X feed over this period, you could easily miss that fact too. 

Between May 1 and June 9, Pradhan made 343 posts on X. The NEET cancellation, student suicides, the CBSE questions, the Jantar Mantar protests demanding his resignation: none of it made the cut. Only one mentioned NEET – that too as a pre-exam good-luck message. 

While students were caught up in chaos, the minister was commemorating RSS ideologue M S Golwalkar’s death anniversary, applauding PM Modi’s Mann Ki Baat episode, and praising PM SHRI, PM-POSHAN and other flagship schemes. On May 12, the day the NTA cancelled the 2026 NEET exam, Pradhan addressed the 58th foundation day of the Indian Council of Social Science Research and the CII Annual Business Summit on the same day. He mentioned NEET at neither.

Similarly, after allegations of his tenure’s first NEET paper leak in September 2021, Pradhan’s posts instead criticised Rahul Gandhi, highlighted railway projects, BJP campaigns in Uttar Pradesh, Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav, and birthday greetings for fellow politicians. 

This time, weeks after the 2026 NEET exams got cancelled, Pradhan told us that the Indian Air Force could now be used for ferrying question papers for the re-test. It may not be entirely unprecedented for a country to transport civilian exam papers using defence forces. After all, the........

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