Between 2004 and 2026, at least 117 public examinations in India were publicly reported as compromised — question papers photographed in strongrooms, OMR sheets
altered after the fact, paid impersonators sitting in place of candidates, and answer keys
moving on WhatsApp hours before the bell.
This is the running record: one row per incident, every row linked to the report it came
from. It counts institutions and outcomes, not people. Filter it, chart it, download it —
and if a leak is missing, add it.
Reported leaks have not tapered off. They have compounded.
Each column is a year; each block is one incident, shaded by how strong the evidence is.
Click a year to filter the whole page to it.
Incidents per year, by strength of evidence
Colour runs dark to light with evidentiary strength. Grey sits outside the scale: officially investigated and rejected.
Confirmed
Alleged
Suspected
Denied
Bands mark the governing coalition at the time; the 2014 boundary falls in May, so that year straddles both. Counts reflect what has been reported and indexed, not everything that happened — see the caveat on the right.
Show the numbers
Year
Confirmed
Alleged
Suspected
Denied
Total
2004
1
0
0
0
1
2006
1
0
0
0
1
2008
1
0
0
0
1
2009
1
0
0
0
1
2010
1
0
0
0
1
2011
5
0
0
0
5
2012
8
0
0
0
8
2013
5
0
0
0
5
2014
1
1
0
0
2
2015
3
0
0
0
3
2016
2
0
0
1
3
2017
4
1
0
0
5
2018
5
0
0
0
5
2019
3
0
0
0
3
2020
4
0
0
0
4
2021
15
1
0
0
16
2022
15
2
0
0
17
2023
7
4
1
0
12
2024
7
2
1
3
13
2025
4
0
1
0
5
2026
3
2
0
1
6
Rate per year
UPA (to May 2014)
24
incidents over 10.1 years
2.4/yr
NDA (May 2014 onwards)
93
incidents over 12.1 years
7.7/yr
Read this carefully
The rise here is partly real and partly an artefact. Recent leaks are
covered by more outlets, indexed by search engines, and litigated in public — a 2007
state recruitment scandal reported once in a regional daily may simply never have
reached this list. Treat the shape as the floor of the problem, not its measurement.
Only 8 of the 117 incidents in this record have a conviction
attached to them. Sources are one report per row — pending cases stay uncounted
02 — Geography
A handful of states carry most of the record.
Click a bar to filter the page; click the state's name to open its own page. “All India”
covers nationwide examinations — NEET, SSC, CBSE boards, railway recruitment — which
affect candidates everywhere.
An incident spanning two states is counted in both, so the bars sum to more than the incident total. Nationwide exams appear only under “All India”.
Show the numbers
Place
Confirmed
Alleged
Suspected
Denied
Total
All India
12
1
1
2
16
Madhya Pradesh
10
1
1
1
13
Uttar Pradesh
12
1
0
0
13
Rajasthan
9
2
0
0
11
Bihar
6
1
0
0
7
Haryana
5
1
0
0
6
Maharashtra
5
1
0
0
6
Uttarakhand
6
0
0
0
6
Gujarat
4
1
0
0
5
Jharkhand
2
2
0
1
5
Punjab
2
0
1
1
4
Assam
3
0
0
0
3
Chhattisgarh
2
1
0
0
3
Delhi
2
1
0
0
3
Himachal Pradesh
3
0
0
0
3
Jammu & Kashmir
2
0
0
0
2
Karnataka
2
0
0
0
2
Tamil Nadu
2
0
0
0
2
Andaman & Nicobar Islands
1
0
0
0
1
Andhra Pradesh
1
0
0
0
1
Arunachal Pradesh
1
0
0
0
1
Kerala
1
0
0
0
1
Manipur
1
0
0
0
1
Odisha
1
0
0
0
1
Telangana
1
0
0
0
1
West Bengal
1
0
0
0
1
Largest single incidents
By candidates affected, where reported.
148L
223L
322.7L
420L
515.6L
69.7L
Figures mix definitions — some sources count everyone registered for the exam, others
only those whose sitting was voided. They are an order-of-magnitude signal, not a
precise headcount.
03 — Institutions
Mostly state recruitment boards — but no tier is clean.
Central agencies run the largest examinations, so their failures affect the most people.
State boards fail far more often.
94
State bodies
80% of incidents
23
Central bodies
20% of incidents
Examination bodies with the most incidents
Renamed institutions are merged — Vyapam, MPPEB and MP ESB are one body across three names.
Central body
State body
Jurisdiction is inferred from where each body's examinations were held. Click a bar to filter the page to that body.
Show the numbers
Body
Type
Jurisdiction
Incidents
Vyapam / MP ESB
State
Madhya Pradesh
12
CBSE
Central
Nationwide
9
NTA
Central
Nationwide
5
RSMSSB
State
Rajasthan
4
UKSSSC
State
Uttarakhand
4
BPSC
State
Bihar
3
Indian Railways (RRB / RRC)
Central
Nationwide
3
JSSC
State
Jharkhand
3
RPSC
State
Rajasthan
3
AIIMS
Central
Delhi
2
BFUHS
State
Punjab
2
BSER / RBSE
State
Rajasthan
2
BSSC
State
Bihar
2
DSSSB
State
Delhi
2
GSSSB
State
Gujarat
2
HBSE
State
Haryana
2
HSSC
State
Haryana
2
MSCE
State
Maharashtra
2
SSC (central)
Central
Nationwide
2
UKPSC
State
Uttarakhand
2
Vyapam / MP ESB appears 12 times in this record —
12 separate examinations
in Madhya Pradesh. The most-repeated body in the current selection
Why the imbalance? There are far more state recruitment exams than
central ones, and state boards are typically smaller, more locally staffed and more
exposed to political pressure. Several — Himachal's HPSSC, Uttarakhand's UKSSSC —
were suspended, dissolved or had their functions transferred after the incidents
listed here.
04 — Scale
One cancelled exam can void a year for millions.
A different measure from the one above: not how many exams failed, but how many people
were sitting them.
Candidates affected per year
Summed across incidents where a source gives a figure. Blank years are years with no reported figure, not years with no incident.
This is deliberately a separate chart from the incident counts. The two measures share no axis and must not be read against one another. One entry alone, UP Police Constable Recruitment Exam 2024, accounts for 48L candidates, 21% of the total plotted here.
Show the numbers
Year
Candidates affected
Incidents reporting a figure
2009
114
1 of 1
2011
52,000
2 of 5
2012
286
1 of 8
2015
11,87,000
3 of 3
2016
25,752
1 of 3
2017
1,90,000
2 of 5
2018
2,50,000
1 of 5
2019
55,000
1 of 3
2020
84,800
3 of 4
2021
45,11,641
6 of 16
2022
12,35,000
5 of 17
2023
31,21,206
6 of 12
2024
92,07,769
7 of 13
2025
3,14,000
3 of 5
2026
22,77,000
2 of 6
05 — What happened next
Exams get cancelled. Cases rarely close.
The response to a leak is fast and visible; the consequences for those who caused it are
slow and mostly invisible in the public record.
An FIR was filed or arrests were made9682%
An official probe was opened (CBI, SIT, STF, ED)6858%
The examination was cancelled6051%
A retest was held2521%
At least one conviction is recorded here87%
This is the weakest number on the page. Each row carries one source, usually written soon after the leak; convictions arrive years later and are rarely back-filled. Read it as “convictions we can currently evidence”, not “convictions that exist”.
No action of any kind was reported43%
Totals in the current selection
Arrests
1,862 across 68 incidents
Convictions
114 across 8 incidents
High confidence
87 of 117 rows
An arrest is not a conviction. 5
entries in the record ended with the
allegation officially investigated and rejected, or with the “leaked” paper turning
out to be fake: NEET-UG 2016 (Phase II), JPSC Combined Civil Services Preliminary Exam (11th-13th CSE), UGC-NET June 2024 and 2 more. Those rows are marked Denied, and they stay
in the record because deleting a retracted scandal would quietly inflate the
confirmed count.
06 — Deaths
The deaths reported alongside these scandals, with their caveats intact.
4
entries carry a reported death figure, ranging from 1 to 23. They are deliberately kept out of the summary figures at the top of this page,
and they are never added to one another, because the numbers do not mean what a single
headline figure would make them mean.
23reported deaths
MP Pre-Medical Test (PMT) 2013
7 Jul 2013 · Madhya Pradesh
SCAM-WIDE, not this single exam: the MP SIT acknowledged 23 'unnatural' deaths of people linked to the Vyapam scam (~7 suicides, ~11 road accidents, ~3 alcohol-related illness); opposition/some press put it at 40-46. CBI probed 24 such deaths and ruled out foul play in every one it examined. Deaths span the whole 2009-2015 scam; attributed to the 2013 PMT row only for indexing. Mostly not suicides and highly contested. Sources: The News Minute, IBTimes, Business Standard.
Not an aspirant: the alleged mastermind of the leak died under suspicious circumstances during a custody transfer (Varanasi->Jaipur) in 2014; his family alleged murder. No suicide. Source: Careers360.
4reported deaths
NEET-UG 2024
5 May 2024 · All India
>=4 NEET aspirants' suicides were reported by families/press as linked to the leak and exam cancellation (2 in Nagpur, incl. an 18-yr-old who left a note refusing the retest; cases in Kokrajhar, Assam and Kalaburagi, Karnataka). Causation (leak vs. general exam stress) is contested and not officially established; count is a floor of individually-reported cases. Sources: India.com, The Quint, Careers360.
21reported deaths
NEET-UG 2026
3 May 2026 · All India
Press reports, student organizations and protest tallies at Jantar Mantar report up to 21 aspirant suicides across multiple states (including Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, UP, Delhi, Karnataka) following the 12 May 2026 exam cancellation and re-test anxiety. This is a contested press/protest tally, not an official causal count, and conflates leak distress with general exam pressure. Sources: The Wire, The Indian Express, Al Jazeera, Hindustan Times.
07 — The record
Read the record itself.
All 117 incidents in one searchable, sortable table. Every row opens
the full account and the report it was drawn from.
Every row here is one news report away from being verifiable — and there are leaks we have certainly missed, especially state recruitment exams before 2015 and cases reported only in regional-language press. The dataset is one CSV file. Adding to it takes a pull request.