The National Testing Agency (NTA) has said that its ‘answer key challenge’ system is designed to be fair to all students and rejected concerns about it being expensive. An NTA answer key challenge is an online process where candidates who take an exam (like JEE Main, NEET, or UGC NET) can object to errors in the provisional answer key.

In a social media post, NTA said that if even a single candidate challenges a question, and the subject experts accept the challenge, the revised answer key applies to every candidate who wrote the exam. It said the fee is charged for challenging an answer to discourage frivolous challenges and it is refunded if the challenge turns out to be right. NTA said 200 rupees per question is refunded to the candidate whose challenge is upheld. The agency said the fee exists to discourage frivolous challenges, not to profit from genuine ones. It said an accurate challenge from any candidate can correct the record for lakhs of others.