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More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

IAF isn’t India’s courier service—3 reasons it ideally shouldn’t fly NEET papers

India has more than 1,300 civilian and state-operated aircraft. NEET paper distribution should not require diverting scarce IAF assets from their primary role.

The primary task of the Indian armed forces is to guard the nation’s sovereignty. While this is a given, there is another duty they perform — ‘aid to civil power’, when asked to do so. India’s citizens have seen the forces accomplish these duties with aplomb. But, there are very many requests that come their way that defy logic and common sense — and sometimes makes one wonder whether the missions and roles of the armed forces are understood correctly. 

The proposal for the Indian Air Force to help transport question papers of the NEET-UG 2026 re-test to different centres needs to be examined through a prism of professionalism — leaving aside the element of bureaucratic incompetence; is it really ‘aid to civil power?’

‘Aid to civil power’ is very evident in Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) missions that the services carry out on a regular basis — flood relief, accident relief, casualty evacuation etc. Then there are tasks that go into nation building. For example, only the IAF has helicopters that can transport bulldozers for road building, from the plains into the mountains and valleys where no means of surface communication exists; that the border roads network has undergone a sea change is partly thanks to the Mi-17, Mi-26, and Chinook helicopter fleet of the IAF under-slinging road building machinery to the narrow hills and valleys of the Northeast.........

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