The Union home ministry on Monday held meetings with officials from the education and IT ministries to address the "integrity concerns" surrounding the National Testing Agency (NTA) examinations.

Last month, experts from the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) under the home ministry had alerted the authorities about an alleged paper leak in the UGC-NET.

"The home ministry is closely looking into the controversy around paper leak cases. The meeting was held today (Monday) with officials from the education and IT ministries on the issues related to the integrity concerns over the exams conducted by the NTA,” said a home ministry official.

The CBI is already probing the NEET-UG paper leak allegations. The Centre had initially dismissed the possibility of a paper leak.

The education ministry had cancelled the UGC-NET on June 18, a day after the examination was conducted, saying that inputs from the home ministry suggested that “the integrity of the examinations had been compromised”.

The home ministry had flagged that a particular set of questions had been leaked on the darknet. The NTA also conducts the UGC-NET.

“The cyber crime coordination centre (I4C) found that the leaked questions were shared on Telegram. When the UGC tallied those questions with the original set, they found matches and decided to call off the exam to restore integrity and transparency,” said a home ministry official.

"Over the past two weeks, home minister Amit Shah had chaired several high-level meetings with cabinet secretary Rajiv Guaba and principal secretary to the Prime Minister, P.K. Mishra, and reviewed several measures to protect future exams from paper leaks,” said the official.

Last week, Union home secretary Ajay Bhalla had a meeting with state chief secretaries and directors-general of police to seek their assistance in overseeing the conduct of the upcoming exams, sources said.

In the meeting, the sources added, Bhalla requested the states to help introduce an additional layer of oversight for the exams by appointing one civil and one police observer for each exam centre in their respective states. They were also asked to appoint a state-level nodal officer to coordinate with the exam conducting agency.

Amid reports of alleged irregularities, including cheating, impersonation and other malpractices, the Centre has also postponed the NEET-PG and the CSIR-UGC NET as a precaution.

The Centre, under attack for paper leaks and other alleged irregularities in exams conducted by the NTA, had removed the agency’s head and named a seven-member panel for reforms.

Amid the raging controversy, the Centre also formed a seven-member panel chaired by former Isro head K. Radhakrishnan to recommend reforms in exam mechanisms and processes, improvements in data security protocols and changes to the NTA’s structure and functions.

The Opposition parties have been up in arms against the Narendra Modi government over allegations of irregularities in the competitive exams.