New Delhi:  Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Department of Higher Education vide letter dated 15 May 2017 had asked the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to continue to conduct the UGC-NET examination as per the existing schedule.

The Minister of State (HRD), Dr. Mahendra Nath Pandey said this today (10 August 2017) in a written reply to a Rajya Sabha question.

The tone of the statement of state HRD Minister reflects there is no chance of conducting the UGC-NET (National Eligibility Test) once a year by replacing the existing twice a year. Doubts surfaced recently among aspirants of the national test that UGC is considering to conduct the NET exam once a year as the CBSE was supposed to conduct the exam in July 2017, which is now delayed to November 2017.

University Grants Commission (UGC) has intimated that a total of 11,16,526 number of candidates had appeared for the University Grants Commission National Eligibility Test (UGC-NET) exam during 2016-17 (July 2016 and January 2017) which was 31,566 more than the number of candidates appeared for the exam during 2015-16 (June 2015 and December 2015). However, the qualifying percentage of students, who have taken four such recent examinations during 2015-2017, has ranged between 3.99% (January, 2017) to 4.96% (December, 2015).