NCERT syllabus to NEET paper leak: Controversies during Pradhan’s tenure as education minister
Dharmendra Pradhan, who resigned as Union education minister amid mounting pressure over irregularities in NEET-UG 2026 exam on Saturday, had, over the past few years, emerged as BJP’s trusted election strategist who is credited to have emerged as one of the key organisers.
57-year-old Pradhan was deeply involved in the RSS cultural activities since childhood. His father Debendra Pradhan, became the Union minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government.
Following his father’s footsteps, Pradhan joined the BJP in 1998 and became an MLA for the first time in 2000 from the Pallahara seat in the BJD-BJP coalition government. In 2004, he was elected to the Lok Sabha from Deogarh.
He became a Rajya Sabha member in 2012 from Bihar and became the petroleum minister in 2014 after Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister. In 2018, he was nominated to the Rajya Sabha from Madhya Pradesh and in 2024 won from the Sambalpur constituency.
In 2021, he became the education minister. Months into him taking charge as education minister allegations of paper leak of NEET-UG 2021 surfaced. In 2024, the NEET-UG paper was leaked which became a major embarrassment. In the same year, he faced severe criticism from a section of historians over the revision of NCERT books.
In 2026, his days were marred with NEET-UG paper leak allegations of irregularities in CBSE on-screen marking system tender. Students and parents alleged that the newly introduced digital evaluation system had led to widespread marking errors and technical problems.
The ministry acknowledged that around 20 answer-sheet mix-ups, while over 13,000 answer books had to be evaluated manually because of poor scan quality. The government also transferred CBSE Chairman Rahul Singh and Secretary Himanshu Gupta amid rising protests from students.
One of the major highlights of his tenure as the education minister is the nationwide implementation of National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and launch of the PM SHRI Schools scheme.
He was a strong advocate of a multilingual education system in schools and advanced reforms in digital education and research. Pradhan defended NEP during Centre’s row with Tamil Nadu over the three-language formula, where opponents accused him of “Hindi imposition”.
He introduced the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhisthan Bill which aims to replace three major higher education regulators—the University Grants Commission (UGC), the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), and the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE)—with a single umbrella commission.
