Paper Trail India

Paper Leaks in India: The Exam Crisis in Data

question-paper leak incidents across Indian board, entrance, university and recruitment exams from June 2014 to July 2026 — compiled from a public Kaggle dataset and verified news reporting, with every added incident carrying a source citation.

Updated · Methodology & sources · Download the dataset (CSV)

The numbers, as headlines

How fast the crisis is growing

Incident counts and what happened afterwards, year by year — swipe between the two views.

Where India's papers leak

The states and the kinds of exams behind the 120 incidents.

From Class 10 boards to job exams

Every incident classified by the stage of education the exam serves.

The human cost

Registered or appeared candidates in leak-hit exams, researched per incident from official releases and press reporting.

Paper leak protests in India

Paper leaks are no longer just an examination problem — they are a recurring trigger for street protests by students and job aspirants across India. The major protest movements, event by event:

NEET-UG paper leak protests, nationwide (2024 and 2026)

The June–July 2024 NEET-UG leak brought nationwide student demonstrations, a Supreme Court-monitored CBI probe, the removal of the NTA's Director General and the first use of the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act 2024. Two years later the cancelled NEET-UG 2026 (22.7 lakh candidates) reignited protests, a fresh CBI investigation, and a re-exam for over 20 lakh aspirants.

BPSC aspirants' protest, Patna (December 2024 – January 2025)

Thousands of BPSC 70th-prelims aspirants held weeks of protests in Patna demanding a full re-exam after leak allegations at the Bapu Sabhagar centre; police used lathi charges and water cannon, Jan Suraaj joined the agitation, and the dispute went to the Supreme Court, which dismissed the plea in April 2025.

JSSC-CGL march, Ranchi (September–December 2024)

After the cancelled January 2024 JSSC-CGL exam, candidates alleged the September re-exam was also compromised — students marched over 100 km, gheraoed the commission in Ranchi, and secured a High Court-ordered FIR and CID probe before results were released.

Dehradun, Bhubaneswar, Imphal, Guwahati (2024–2025)

The Uttarakhand Unemployed Union led protests in Dehradun until the UKSSSC graduate-level exam was cancelled (October 2025); Odisha aspirants gheraoed a minister's residence over the OSSSC CRE leaks; Manipur's student body DESAM demanded probes into back-to-back HSLC and HSSLC leaks; and Assam student organisations demanded the education minister's resignation after every Class 11 paper was cancelled statewide in March 2025.

Civil society, the courts, and CJP

The protest wave has drawn in India's courts and rights organisations. The Supreme Court monitored the NEET-UG 2024 case; the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act 2024 created jail terms for leak networks; and civil-rights groups such as Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) have examined the governance fallout — CJP's June 2026 analysis argued that exam security cannot justify sweeping communication restrictions imposed after the NEET leak, calling them a substitute for accountability. The pattern behind the anger is visible in this tracker's data: only of incidents ended in a re-exam, while closed with no judgement at all — every incident and source is listed below.

Students affected

Candidate counts are researched for of the incidents — registered or appeared figures for the affected exam (whole-exam totals where the single leaked paper's count is unpublished), so these totals are a floor, not a ceiling.

Students affected — category × year

Blank = no incident with a reported candidate count in that cell.

Timeline: major paper leaks in India, year by year

  • 2014 — 1 incident (1 confirmed). Major: UP CPMT 2014 (100,358 candidates).
  • 2015 — 3 incidents (3 confirmed). Major: AIPMT 2015 (632,625 candidates); Provincial civil services preliminary examination (450,000 candidates); UP CPMT 2015 (121,900 candidates).
  • 2016 — 2 incidents (2 confirmed). Major: NEET Phase 1 2016 (600,000 candidates); Review Officer/Assistant Review Officer - 2016 (204,000 candidates).
  • 2017 — 3 incidents (3 confirmed). Major: Class 12th Marathi (1,505,000 candidates); Class 12th CS and Physics (101,945 candidates); HCS (Judicial) Paper -2017 (14,301 candidates).
  • 2018 — 5 incidents (4 confirmed). Major: History and political science (1,751,000 candidates); 10th Math and 12th Economics (1,638,428 candidates); Gujarat Police Constable Recruitment (876,000 candidates); CGL 2nd Tier, 2017 (190,000 candidates).
  • 2019 — 3 incidents (3 confirmed). Major: High School Mathematics Exam (1,660,609 candidates); Mother India Language Exam (587,720 candidates); JE Exam (202,616 candidates).
  • 2020 — 2 incidents (1 confirmed). Major: Mathematics Prepatory Exam; 2019 PSC Police Constable Exam.
  • 2021 — 8 incidents (6 confirmed). Major: Uttar Pradesh Teacher Eligbility Test (2,000,000 candidates); Rajasthan Eligibility Examination for Teachers (1,600,000 candidates); JEE MAINS (767,700 candidates); MHADA Exam (250,000 candidates).
  • 2022 — 11 incidents (8 confirmed). Major: Class 12th English (2,410,000 candidates); High School Mathematics Exam (1,648,000 candidates); Forest Guard Recruitment (1,636,000 candidates); BPSC 67th Exam (602,000 candidates).
  • 2023 — 15 incidents (10 confirmed). Major: Constable Exam (1,800,000 candidates); Mathematics Exam (1,457,293 candidates); High School Hindi & Telgu (947,699 candidates); Class 12th Exam (729,426 candidates).
  • 2024 — 29 incidents (14 confirmed). Major: Constable Exam (4,817,441 candidates); CBSE Class 10 and 12 Board Exams 2024 (fake leak claims) (3,900,000 candidates); UP Board Class 12 (Intermediate) Maths & Biology papers (2,577,997 candidates); NEET-UG 2024 (medical entrance) (2,333,297 candidates).
  • 2025 — 23 incidents (16 confirmed). Major: CBSE Class 10 and 12 Board Exams 2025 (fake leak claims) (4,200,237 candidates); UP Board Class 10 Mathematics paper (Etah) (2,732,000 candidates); NEET UG 2025 (fake leak claims) (2,276,069 candidates); MP Board Pre-Board Exams (Class 10 and 12) (1,660,252 candidates).
  • 2026 — 15 incidents (4 confirmed). Major: UP Board Class 10 and 12 Exams 2026 (viral leak claims) (5,230,297 candidates); CBSE Class 10 and 12 Board Exams 2026 (fake leak claims) (4,600,000 candidates); NEET-UG 2026 (2,270,000 candidates); NEET-UG 2026 Re-examination (fake leak claims) (2,000,000 candidates).

Candidate figures are registered or appeared counts for the affected exam, as researched per incident; whole-exam totals where the single paper's count is unpublished.

Every incident

All incidents, 2014–2026 — newest first

Full details — conducting body, action taken, notes and source citations — are in the downloadable CSV.

Methodology

Base data: India Question Paper Leaks — Kaggle (66 incidents, Jun 2014–Aug 2024, CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0), with state-name typos cleaned. 54 further incidents (Jan 2024 – Jul 2026) were researched from credible outlets — The Indian Express, The Hindu, ThePrint/PTI, Deccan Herald, LiveLaw, Careers360, India TV, regional dailies and official board advisories — each row carrying its citation. "Accused" incidents include officially denied fake-leak scams, kept deliberately: they are part of the leak economy. Multi-day episodes of a single leak are counted once. Candidate counts (registered or appeared) were researched per incident from official releases and press reporting and exist for incidents; whole-exam totals are used where the single leaked paper's count is unpublished, and totals are minimums. Category, education level and outcome are derived by a committed, re-runnable script (scripts/paperleaks/generate_data.py) so the CSV and this page can never silently diverge.

Download full dataset (CSV)

Citations

Every incident in the dataset with its source, in chronological order. Incidents from the base Kaggle dataset cite the headline and outlet recorded there; incidents added for 2024–2026 link to the article used to verify them.