India's premier engineering entrance examination is facing its most serious integrity crisis in recent memory.
The Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Main 2025 results, affecting over 15 lakh aspirants, have become the subject of forensic investigations and high court intervention following allegations of systematic scorecard manipulation and digital tampering.
The controversy centres around the claims that students' response sheets and percentiles were altered between initial downloads and final results.
Two landmark cases before the Delhi High Court have brought to light systemic irregularities: students report dramatic score changes, missing response data, and unexplained discrepancies that occurred after they had already downloaded their results from the National Testing Agency's (NTA) official portal.
The first legal challenge came from Anusha Gupta, whose case would put a face to the crisis. In February, she downloaded her Session 1 scorecard showing a percentile of 98.68. When the final composite results were released in April, that same Session 1 score had mysteriously dropped to 25.58.
The mathematical impossibility of such a change in a completed examination session formed the crux of her petition to the Delhi High Court.
Simultaneously, Shashank Shekhar Pandey filed his own petition with equally compelling evidence. During his examination, the on-screen interface had confirmed he attempted 46 questions, a detail reinforced by a pop-up message at submission.
However, his official response sheet recorded only 29 attempted questions, a discrepancy that cost him approximately 65 marks and fundamentally altered his percentile ranking.
Both students arrived in court armed with extensive digital evidence. They presented browser histories, file metadata, download logs, and even the physical laptops used to access the NTA portal. Their documentation proved they had followed official procedures, downloaded legitimate documents from authorised sources, and maintained unaltered copies of their original results.
The Delhi High Court's response was swift and unequivocal. Rather than dismissing the cases as individual grievances, the judiciary recognised the potential for systematic failure.
Justice presiding over the cases immediately ordered interim relief, allowing affected students to register for JEE Advanced while investigations proceeded, and more significantly, directed that their Advanced results be sealed pending resolution of the underlying controversy.
On May 14, the Delhi High Court ordered a forensic probe into JEE Main score discrepancies, directing Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) to verify if students’ files were genuinely downloaded from the NTA site and to check for metadata tampering or backend manipulation. But both CFSL and CERT-IN declined, citing lack of technical capability.
Recognising the seriousness, the court escalated the probe to the National Cyber Forensic Laboratory (NCFL), giving it direction to investigate and report, raising the possibility of pausing or recalculating JEE Advanced results based on the findings.
The institutional response from the NTA has been marked by denial and deflection. When confronted with evidence of discrepancies, NTA officials dismissed original scorecards as “forged,” despite being downloaded directly from their official portal. Students visiting NTA offices were allegedly told, “What you see, believe it as truth. We cannot confirm if it is a lie. What has come is the result.”
The Ministry of Education has maintained almost complete silence on the controversy, offering no comprehensive explanation for the alleged discrepancies or the measures being taken to address them. This institutional reticence has only deepened suspicions about the extent of the crisis and the authorities' willingness to address it transparently.
Into this institutional vacuum stepped Tushar Gangoly, a student whose own experience with scorecard discrepancies would transform him into an unlikely activist. When he first downloaded his JEE Main response sheet, the attempted question count bore no resemblance to what he remembered submitting during his examination.
“When I first saw the discrepancy in my own score, I was devastated,” Gangoly recalls. ‘It felt like my dreams had just collapsed. At that point, I had no idea what went wrong or who to turn to.”
Rather than accept the discrepancy as an isolated error, Gangoly began investigating. His breakthrough came when he discovered the ongoing legal cases filed by Anusha Gupta and Shashank Shekhar Pandey. “Their experiences resonated with mine, and I realised this wasn't just an isolated error, it was part of a larger systemic issue that needed to be addressed.”
Gangoly's response was to launch a comprehensive awareness campaign. He began documenting his findings on Reddit, where his posts about the “JEE Mains Crisis” became some of the most visible discussions of the controversy. A Change.org petition he created has garnered over 800 verified signatures, while a Google Form he established has allowed dozens of affected students to document their experiences and connect with others facing similar issues.
Through his social media outreach, Gangoly has connected with over 60 students reporting similar discrepancies. The stories are remarkably consistent: percentiles that changed between downloads, response sheets that didn't match exam experiences, and institutional responses that ranged from dismissive to accusatory.
The personal cost for students like Gangoly continues to mount. The NCFL, despite court orders, has requested multiple extensions for its investigation. The next court hearing is scheduled for July 3, but by then, most counseling rounds will have concluded and private college admissions will be closed.
“The delay is incredibly costly,” Gangoly notes. “I've already enrolled in a private institution just to avoid wasting a year. By mid-July, I'll likely be in Semester 1. If any major corrective action comes after that, it'll be too late for me and for many others.”
The NCFL’s investigation represents a critical juncture. Their findings will determine whether allegations of systematic manipulation are substantiated and could potentially affect thousands of students' academic futures. The complexity of the investigation, evidenced by multiple agencies initially declining the task, suggests the potential for systemic failure in India's most important educational gateway.
“This isn't just about scores anymore,” Gangoly concludes. “It's a question of credibility and institutional trust. We've seen what happened with NEET, and we can't afford another such situation with JEE. The system needs to be transparent, the investigation must be conclusive, and those responsible must be held accountable.”
With academic timelines moving forward and many students forced to make immediate decisions, justice delayed may soon become justice denied. The ultimate resolution will likely determine not just individual fates, but the future credibility of India's competitive examination system itself.
