NTA's salary bill remains a secret as agency denies RTI request

NTA has refused to disclose its salary bill and top officials' pay under RTI, despite having 198 personnel. The move comes as a reform panel urges reduced outsourcing after the 2024 exam controversies.

In Short

• NTA refused to disclose salary and staff expenditure details under RTI
• Agency said data not available in requested format, citing RTI Act limits
• NTA did not deny existence of information, only its format availability

The National Testing Agency (NTA), the body that conducts high-stakes examinations such as NEET, JEE Main and CUET for millions of students, has declined to reveal how much it spends on salaries and staff or how much its highest paid officials earn.

In response to a Right to Information (RTI) application filed by India Today, the agency refused to provide details of its salary expenditure and the remuneration of its top officials, stating that the information was not available in the format sought.

The RTI application sought year wise details of expenditure incurred by the NTA on salaries, allowances and other staff-related payments since its inception, along with information on the agency's ten highest paid officials, including their designation, annual salary, allowances and total annual remuneration.

"The data is not available in the desired format, as requested by the applicant," the agency said in its reply dated June 13, 2026.

The NTA invoked Section 2(f) of the RTI Act, arguing that public authorities are required to provide only information that already exists in their records. "Creation of new data, compilation of information from different sources, or collation of details amounts to generating information, which is beyond the scope of Section 2(f) of the RTI Act, 2005," the reply stated.

The response is likely to raise questions about transparency in an organisation that occupies a critical position in India's education system. Notably, the NTA did not state that the information does not exist. Instead, it maintained that the data was not available in the format sought and that compiling it would amount to creating new information.

The RTI response assumes significance because the agency's staffing structure is already in the public domain. In a reply to Parliament in December 2024, the Ministry of Education disclosed that the NTA had 198 personnel, comprising 22 employees on deputation, 38 contractual employees, and 138 outsourced staff.

The issue assumes added importance in light of the recommendations of the K Radhakrishnan Committee, constituted in 2024 after controversies surrounding national entrance examinations.

The committee had recommended minimising the outsourcing of examination staff and centres, stressing that high-stakes examination functions should not rely excessively on temporary or weakly supervised delivery chains.

Against this backdrop, details of NTA's expenditure on personnel and the remuneration structure of its senior officials acquire greater public interest significance.

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