New Delhi: Calling the National Testing Agency (NTA) a “National Torturing Agency” due to its repeated failure to conduct examinations effectively, the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) on Monday, June 9, demanded the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan “within ten days”, and said it would march to the Ministry of Education on June 19 if its demand was not met. The student body also demanded scrapping of the NTA, citing repeated controversies over the exams it has conducted, especially the latest NEET-undergraduate exam to select medical aspirants, which had to be cancelled over a paper leak.Among SFI’s key demands is the creation of a more transparent examination and evaluation system in place of the NTA. Speaking at the Press Club of India on Monday, leaders including Adarsh M. Saji, president of SFI; Subhash Jakhar, the vice president; Srijan Bhattacharya, the secretary; and Aishe Ghosh, the joint secretary, said the student body was planning to approach the courts to scrap the testing agency.“NTA, in its nearly ten years of existence, has been involved in multiple re-examinations, paper leaks, technical errors and other issues. We are planning to go to court to scrap NTA,” said Bhattacharya. He said NTA had been involved in “48 re-examinations and 89 paper leaks” in eight years, adding that “this NTA has become a National Torturing Agency”.The student leaders said that in the ongoing movement against paper leaks, young aspirants to higher education and professional education have been raising serious allegations of mismanagement of examinations by the Ministry of Education.The SFI had been protesting against the NTA over repeated instances of examination-related and other failures in the education system. Following the cancellation of the 2026 NEET-UG paper, the activists sought to protest outside the Ministry of Human Resource Development, to condemn the cancellation as well as the paper leak. However, said the panel, over 25 student activists were arrested for peacefully protesting.The student body said it is now bringing together all affected groups, including parents, teachers and students, in an organised manner. It has written to Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan demanding his resignation. In the letter, the organisation has given the government an ‘ultimatum’ of 10 days, failing which they would march to the Ministry of Education, on June 19.As part of its effort to raise awareness and assist students, the SFI is raising the slogan: “Enough Is Enough: Remove Dharmendra Pradhan, Scrap NTA”. The campaign has collected around 5 lakh signatures from people across the country so far, said the speakers.“There must be people within the NTA system who are involved in such scams, selling question papers and all that. It’s not one time or two times, if the fault is happening 89 times. Then there must be some ghost in your system only,” said Bhattacharya. The members demanded an enquiry and investigation into the internal functioning and systematic reasons that have led to these failures.The NTA has never released a definitive internal report about how its structural protocols were breached, but have blamed external rackets, the SFI said.Another criticism of NTA, raised by the student body, was its hyper-centralised structure and lack of state involvement. The members said it was an unscientific body and demanded an examination and testing system that involves the government and reputed agencies.On the Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE) on-screen marking fiasco, the organisation demanded the scrapping of the OSM system and the reinstatement of manual paper checking. The student leaders argued that the new system had jeopardised the entire examination system.Condemning the targetting of students and teachers who are raising concerns over this systemic failure, the SFI activists stated that they stood in solidarity with them. “We stand with the CBSE students, the teachers, be it Khan Sir [a private coaching centre owner] or any other individual raising their voice. They are being labelled as anti-national, Pakistani and Bangladeshi agents, CIA agents, all this is rubbish, we stand in solidarity with all of them,” Bhattacharya said.SFI leaders said they would continue mobilising students, parents and teachers across the country and would march to the education ministry on June 19 if their demands remained unmet.