CUET PG 2026 rescheduled exams did not change scoring method: NTA

The National Testing Agency (NTA) has issued a clarification regarding concerns raised on social media over the conduct of the Common University Entrance Test Postgraduate (CUET PG) 2026 examinations. Through a post on platfom X, agency addressed questions about certain subjects being held on multiple dates. Allegations are being made that the candidates who appeared in rescheduled exams were exempted from the normalisation process.

NTA declared the CUET PG 2026 result on April 24, 2026, for the examination conducted in Computer-Based Test (CBT) mode from March 6 to March 30 across multiple cities in the country. Candidates can access their scorecards online using their login credentials.

In an official statement, NTA said the clarification was being issued to prevent speculation and misinformation surrounding the examination process.

According to the agency, 565 candidates across 28 subjects were unable to appear for their CUET PG 2026 examinations on the originally scheduled dates in March due to unavoidable circumstances.These included law-and-order disruptions in Tura, Meghalaya, and security-related issues at certain overseas examination centres.

The post reads, "It’s NTA’s policy to ensure that, as far as possible, no candidate is penalised for circumstances for which they are not responsible. Accordingly, NTA rescheduled the examination for these 565 candidates only on 29th and 30th March 2026, purely as a welfare measure."

Also read CUET PG 2026: Apply by June 15 for BHU, NIT Trichy, DU, JNU, and other central universities

No normalisation

Addressing claims that candidates who appeared in the rescheduled examination were not subjected to normalisation, NTA clarified that no CUET PG 2026 candidate underwent score normalisation in the first place.

The post reads, "For CUET (PG), NTA’s policy is to report absolute marks for every candidate, in every subject. No candidate's score is normalized — not in the main examination, not in the reschedule. There was therefore nothing the rescheduled candidates were exempted from; they were scored on exactly the same basis as everyone else."

NTA further argued that applying normalisation between the main examination and the rescheduled cohort would not have been statistically meaningful because of the vast difference in the number of candidates involved. The post reads, "Normalization across these two groups would in any case be statistically meaningless given the scale involved. For example, in the main examination roughly 16,000 candidates appeared in English against about 120 in the reschedule; in Political Science the figures were about 26,000 against roughly 100; in History about 13,600 against under 80. A cohort of a hundred cannot be statistically normalized against tens of thousands."

According to the agency, attempting to statistically normalise a group of around 100 candidates against tens of thousands of candidates would not produce reliable or meaningful results.

Also read DU Admission 2026: CUET PG applicants report CSAS portal glitches, demand application deadline extension

Question papers vetted by experts

NTA also clarified that the question papers used in the rescheduled examination were not created after the disruption. Instead, they were part of a set of approved papers prepared in advance by subject experts.

NTA posted, "The reschedule used approved question papers that were finalised earlier by subject experts, who certified that they were of difficulty equivalent to the papers used in the main examination for the same subjects."

The testing agency concluded that every CUET PG 2026 candidate's score is computed on an identical, absolute-marks basis and unforeseen disruptions do not negatively impact students' opportunities.