New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his third reel on the evening of July 27 announced a High Powered Task Force on “revamping examinations by NTA [National Testing Agency].” The task force was announced by him bypassing the recently appointed education minister Pralhad Joshi and with no consultation with either the opposition parties or youth protestors who dragged Dharmedra Pradhan out of office.The very existence of the NTA which has deeply centralised competitive examinations in India has been contentious. But it is not known if this most recent committee will go into why the NTA exists at all.A committee headed by a former ISRO chairman, Dr K. Radhakrishnan was appointed by the Modi government two years ago in June 2024 after NEET and other examination paper leaks rocked the country and BJP suffered a setback in the Lok Sabha elections. The High-Level Committee of Experts was mandated to “ensure transparent, smooth and fair conduct of examinations.” It submitted its report and while its recommendations were accepted, there was no implementation. The committee had recommended “restructuring the NTA into a more accountable body, shifting toward technology-driven examination systems, reducing dependence on physical paper transport, exploring hybrid models with encrypted digital transmission and on-site printing, and moving to multi-stage examinations.”The final report of the committee appears to have been pulled down from the site. You can check here.Now, another former ISRO chairman finds himself in the committee appointed two years on. Who are the other members? Nandan Nilekani, founder of Infosys and Aadhaar (head)Nandan Nilekani is an Indian billionaire entrepreneur who is the co-founder and current non-executive chairman of the IT giant Infosys. Beyond his corporate career, Nilekani has positioned himself as the chief architect of India’s digital state, while operating as an unelected technocrat. His wife, Rohini, heads Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies and is a major supporter of numerous civil society groups in India. In 2009, he was appointed the founding chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India, holding the rank of a Cabinet Minister, to roll out Aadhaar, a national biometric database designed to assign a unique ID to every Indian resident. While championed as a necessary tool for welfare delivery, Aadhaar has been criticised for enabling mass state surveillance, violating fundamental privacy rights and repeatedly exposing citizens’ personal information through data breaches. He subsequently joined the Congress party and lost the 2014 election from Bengaluru South Lok Sabha seat.Nilekani’s influence in government initiatives extends deeply into the India Stack and the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which blur the boundaries between public infrastructure and private tech monetisation. He continues to chair the government’s Technology Advisory Group for Unique Projects, wielding immense influence over public policy by embedding corporate technological frameworks into the core of Indian public life. Between 2005 and 2009, he was a member of the National Knowledge Commission appointed by the United Progressive Alliance government, in which he was tasked to “lead a group studying e-governance”.Former IB chief Tapan DekaTapan Deka is an IPS officer and was the Intelligence Bureau chief – last serving on a year’s extension after retirement – with his tenure ending June 30, 2026. He was very much in the saddle as student and youth anger gathered force and momentum in this movement that swarmed central Delhi. The government was clearly surprised at the strength of numbers when people turned up in the national capital. Critics have pointed to him being in charge of intelligence gathering even as militants killed 26 innocents in a horrific attack in Pahalgam last year, something which is seen as a monumental intelligence collapse.He is a Himachal Pradesh cadre officer, who has received two extensions post retirement, making him the longest serving IB chief in over three decades. He started serving as IB chief since 2022. How an Intelligence Bureau former chief gets to add anything to basic and serious questions around examinations in the country facing an unprecedented crisis of credibility is not clear.Former ISRO chairman SomanathS. Somanath is an aerospace engineer, and was the head of the Indian Space Research Organisation between 2022 and 2025. He previously headed the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre and the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre. Most recently, earlier this month, he was appointed an observer on the board of the Chennai-based space startup Agnikul Cosmos – part of a larger trend of ISRO scientists leaving the government scientists jumping ship to the private sector, which has given New Delhi some pause. Somanath had earlier said that business opportunities for private players needed to be built into the space sector, though he had added that this did not mean the privatisation of ISRO itself.Somanath’s stint as ISRO chairman was marked by the successful Chandrayaan 3 mission, but also by certain remarks he made that gave people pause. In May 2023, he told a gathering of students that scientific concepts like algebra, square roots, concepts of time, architecture, the structure of the universe, metallurgy and even aviation were first found in the Vedas. He also claimed that Sanskrit is the most appropriate language for programming: “Engineers and scientists like Sanskrit a great deal. It suits the language of computers and those learning artificial intelligence learn it. Lots of research is being done on how Sanskrit can be used for computation.” This claim – about Sanskrit and programming – is usually misattributed to NASA because of ambitious interpretations of a 1985 research paper published by researcher Rick Briggs. While Briggs mentions the use of Sanskrit in early AI research, he never asserts that it is the best. In January 2026 too, Somanath sought to link the scientific with the religious, saying that scientific inquiry and spiritual pursuit stem from the same quest for truth. The methods differ, but the pursuit of truth is identical,” he said.V. Kamakoti, director, IIT-MadrasAn alumnus of IIT Madras, Kamakoti joined the faculty in 2001 and took over as its director in January 2022. His tenure – and his public posturing and comments – have been highly controversial. Exposing his take on cow urine’s benefits and digging his heels in when accused of projecting pseudoscience and undermining what a person in his job should be doing, he said, “The antifungal, antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties of cow urine have been scientifically demonstrated… Top journals in the United States have published scientific evidence. It is important to note that my comments were made in the context of advocating for organic farming and the protection of indigenous cattle breeds, which play a crucial role in agriculture and the overall economy.” When asked by reporters if he consumes Panchgavya – comprising five cow products, milk, cow urine, cow dung, ghee and curd – he said, he did so during “our festivals”. He said, “It is in our customs. I do eat Panchagavya.”He told a news agency after being appointed via PM Modi’s social media post, that “technology intervention is extremely important for conducting examinations”.Anita Karwal, Gujarat-cadre IAS officerAnita Karwal is a Gujarat cadre IAS officer, whose LinkedIn post boasts of having been a civil servant for “36+ years”. Currently, Karwal is chairperson of the Gujarat Real Estate Regulatory Authority (GujRERA) and has been in this post since July 25, 2023.She retired as education secretary in 2022 and was chairperson CBSE before that. These are the years when paper leaks and other questions around the conduct of public examinations created a maelstrom of controversy and debate. She was Chief Electoral Officer in Gujarat for the assembly elections in 2012 and for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, before coming on central deputation.Amrit Lal Meena, former IAS officerAmrit Lal Meena retired from the IAS after stints as coal secretary and special secretary of logistics at the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade. In this committee, he is designated a ‘logistics expert’. It was during his years as coal secretary that the coal recruitment scam transpired, with the ministry saying there had been irregularities in the recruitment of general managers in Coal India Limited. Reports from 2024 point out that while the ministry had directed action against 14 officials, no further action was taken. Meena is quoted as having said that the ministry will look into things.In 2024, Meena – a 1989-batch Bihar cadre officer – was appointed the state chief secretary after years in central deputation.He has a BTech in electrical engineering and is from Rajasthan. Meanwhile, the BJP has put out a post saying this is about “reforming exams and building trust.”