New Delhi, May 15 -- More than a year after a government-appointed reform panel made a "strong case" for moving NEET-UG to computer-based testing - describing it as the "sure way forward" against paper leaks - the transition remains stalled, caught between NTA's infrastructure constraints and a health ministry condition that has proved impossible to meet for a test administered to 2.3 million takers: that any online exam must be conducted in a single shift. The Radhakrishnan panel, constituted after the NEET-UG 2024 controversy, recommended in its October 2024 report that the examination shift from pen-and-paper to digital mode. "In a high-technology era, continuing indefinitely with pen-and-paper testing is difficult to justify. Printing, transport and physical distribution create multiple leak points. Computer-based testing (CBT) allows algorithm-driven delivery with minimal manual handling and hence can act as a prevention method for paper leaks," a member of the panel said, asking not to be named. The recommendation has gone nowhere. NTA director general Abhishek Singh said the agency is ready to move - but only on instruction. "We will conduct the exam in CBT mode if the health ministry gives us in writing that they want us to conduct the exam in CBT mode. It will take around 20 shifts to manage around 2.2 million NEET candidates, and we will have to follow the normalisation process to ensure fairness to all students." The infrastructure numbers explain why. "Around 150,000 students sit for CBT exams in a shift conducted by NTA. We conducted JEE Main 2026 session 1 in nine shifts for over 1.3 million students and session 2 in 10 shifts for over 1 million students. NTA scores are normalised across multi-shift papers based on relative performance within each shift," an NTA official said, requesting anonymity. Twenty shifts for 2.3 million NEET candidates would be more than twice what JEE Main required across both its sessions combined. The health ministry, meanwhile, has held a position it communicated to NTA nearly three years ago: online examinations are acceptable only in a single shift. "When this matter was brought to the health ministry almost three years back, it was already communicated that if the NTA can conduct online examinations in CBT mode in a single shift, then it should do so. We do not want problems later arising from complaints that one set of questions was different from another or that an earlier paper was easier. To rule out issues related to normalisation, the health ministry had suggested conducting the examination in a single shift," a senior official said, asking not to be named. The same official acknowledged the scale while declining to shift the position: "This year, around 23 lakh students appeared for the examination, which is a huge number. But India is capable of advancing to that stage."...