– Dipta Joshi (Mumbai)

TET protest in Mumbai: highly prized jobs

India’s most industrialised state, Maharashtra (pop.129 million) with Mumbai established as the country’s commercial capital, seems to be acquiring an unsavoury reputation as an epicentre of high stakes public exams cheating and scandals. On May 12, the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test — Undergraduate (NEET-UG) 2026 written on May 3 in 5,400 centres in 550 cities countrywide by 2.2 million school-leavers for admission into India’s 824 medical and 330 dental colleges, was cancelled after complaints about leakage of question papers were verified.

On-going investigations by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) indicate that the prime suspects in NEET-UG 2026 question paper leakage are based in Latur, Nashik and Pune, the hub of Maharashtra’s thriving higher education coaching ecosystem. On May 14-15, CBI arrested a retired chemistry professor in Latur, a biology professor in Pune, and coaching centre proprietor also in Pune.

Less than two months later, the Maharashtra Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) — gateway examination for thousands of graduates aspiring to become government school teachers — was cancelled after an alleged paper leak, leaving over 600,000 candidates statewide in the lurch.

On June 27, the Maharashtra State Council of Examinations postponed TET 2026 scheduled to be written on June 28 following police information that question papers were circulating in the public domain. The police, which has thus far arrested seven persons connected to the paper leaks, believes the scam is the handiwork of an inter-state network thriving in Bihar, Delhi, Agra and Haryana. They say the alleged fraudsters expected to earn Rs.1.5 crore by illegally obtaining and selling the papers to TET aspirants before the exam date.

In an economy in which 40 percent of college and university graduates are unemployed, government school and higher education teaching jobs are highly prized. Teachers in government schools are placed on a par with Central and state government employees who are a high wage island within the economy.

In Maharashtra under the Seventh Pay Commission scales applicable to all government employees, primary school teachers are assured Seventh Pay Commission pay packages, job security, pension and provident fund benefits. The monthly remuneration of primary school teachers of three-five years’ experience ranges between Rs.60,000-65,000 per month and secondary school teachers Rs.76,000-83,000 per month. Against this, primary and secondary school teachers in private schools are paid just half of what their government school counterparts earn.

This year, 600,000 candidates/graduates with B.Ed and Diploma in Elementary Education (D. El. Ed) qualifications were expected to write TET 2026 in 1,028 centres in the state, a sharp rise from the last held TET (November 2025) when 475,000 wrote it. This year’s higher number of registrations is also the result of the recent Supreme Court ruling making TET clearance mandatory for in-service teachers as well as new recruits.

The TET paper leak coming fast on the heels of the NEET-UG 2026 scandal is having a political fallout. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis of the Bharatiya Janata Party, heading a tri-party coalition (BJP, Shiv Sena (Shinde), Nationalist Congress Party), is determined to punish the guilty. A Special Investigation Team (SIT) has been constituted to probe the case, and the government is likely to invoke the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) against the accused. The dreaded MCOCA, once used to collar Mumbai’s underworld gangs in the 1990s, makes it near impossible for the accused to get bail.

Meanwhile the government is all set to make TET online with a transparent and secure exam system next year. It has resolved to set up a committee to formulate the roadmap for transition from the current pen and paper exam to an online system.

Unsurprisingly, these assurances following a spate of exam-related scams centred in the state have not mollified opposition parties. They are up in arms and have staged assembly walkouts demanding the resignation of education minister Dada Bhuse as well as the Maharashtra State Council of Examination (MSCE) chairman, Nandkumar Bedse. Activists from the Youth Congress and National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) have staged protests outside the education minister’s residence resulting in multiple arrests.

In this connection, it’s pertinent to note that this is the second year in succession that there is a cloud over TET examinations. In 2025, a similar pre-exam scam was nipped in the bud through 18 pre-emptive arrests. Aspiring test takers and teachers’ associations are miffed about the delay in bringing the guilty to justice and question the integrity of state government conducted exams.

“The entire TET examination process is messy. After the recent NEET-UG and CBSE OSM scandals, the state government should have been on high alert about inter-state gangs stealing question papers and tampering with answer sheets. Teachers are undergoing undue pressure but the government has turned a blind eye to their problems. While the Supreme Court has made it mandatory even for in-service teachers to write TET, the state government is deputing them for census and Special Intensive Revision (SIR) data collection duties. How can teachers prepare for TET as well as discharge these additional duties? We are also opposed to the government’s decision of holding TET exams online because most senior teachers aren’t well versed with the use of computers,” says Vijay Kombe, State President of the Maharashtra State Primary Teachers Forum.