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The National Testing Agency (NTA) is closing the application window for the University Grants Commission - National Eligibility Test (UGC NET) exam 2025 today, May 7. The eligible candidates who wish to appear for the exam can submit the online application form up to 11.59 PM tonight. Direct link to apply online for UGC NET June session is available at ugcnet.nta.ac.in. While the registration window will be shut by tonight, applicants can pay their exam fee for UGC NET up to May 8, 2025 (11.59 PM).

The UGC NET exam 2025 is scheduled tentatively from June 21 to 30, 2025 in 85 subjects. The UGC NET will test the candidates' eligibility for admission into Ph.D. programmes, award of Junior Research Fellowship (JRF), and appointment as Assistant Professors in Indian Universities and Colleges.

Direct link to register for UGC NET exam 2025

The application process for UGC NET June 2025 session began from April 16. Interested candidates can apply online at ugcnet.nta.ac.in. Here is the direct link to fill the application form:

Applicants must make sure that the email address and contact number they provide in the application form are their own or their parents/guardian's only. All the information regarding the UGC NET 2025 exam will be shared with the applicants through their registered contact details.

UGC NET Application Fee 2025

Aspirants can pay their UGC NET application fee on or before May 8, 2025. The fee varies from category to category. Category-wise UGC NET fee is as follows:

General/Unreserved: Rs. 1,150

General-EWS/OBC-NCL: Rs. 600

SC/ST/PwD/Third Gender: Rs. 300

When UGC NET June 2025 exam will be held?

As per the announced schedule by the NTA, the UGC NET exam is tentatively scheduled to take place from June 21 to June 30, 2025. In case of any alteration in the date sheet of the exam, the students will be informed by the NTA through a formal notice on the examination website.

The UGC NET 2025 admit card will be published a few days before the examination date. The same will be notified to the registered students through the official NTA website.

The Ministry of Education has informed that Banaras Hindu University (BHU) has been appointed as the national coordinator for Institutions of National Importance (INIs) in the SWAYAM platform.  The decision was ratified in the 26th meeting of the SWAYAM Board. Dr Ashutosh Mohan of Banaras Hindu University's Institute of Management Studies has been appointed as the national coordinator for SWAYAM.

The University will now be monitoring the quality and progress of the online courses developed by over 160 Institutes of National Importance (INIs) in the nation, including Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), National Institutes of Technology (NITs), Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs), Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs), and Central Universities.

As per a statement released by the University, Dr Mohan asserted that he will "ensure that online education provided by India's top institutions is of international standards of quality, accessibility, and relevance."

"We are committed to improving the user experience, making academic credit transfers easier, and streamlining the course life cycle in full compliance with the 2024 SWAYAM Guidelines," he added further.

Prof Sanjay Kumar, ad-interim vice-chancellor and rector, Banaras Hindu University, congratulated the BHU SWAYAM team for the success and assured his determination to offer all necessary support and coordination towards establishing BHU as a norm on the platform.

The contribution of BHU will be academic and administrative facilitation to INIs, enabling institutions to fulfill SWAYAM 2024 guidelines, prevent duplication of contents and maintain curriculum relevance.

The varsity will also rationalize examination and certification norms in consultation with the regulatory agencies, and facilitate credit transfer and UGC, NTA-suitable certification on the basis of examinations.

BHU has been very active on the SWAYAM portal, with 37 courses already in the process of being developed and another 63 to be started by July 2025. The institution also has a dedicated digital studio for content development, as per a university release.

With this appointment, BHU joins the list of small group of national coordinators on the SWAYAM platform, which also includes nine other prominent institutions like All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), University Grants Commission (UGC), NPTEL–IIT Madras, NCERT, NIOS, IIM Bangalore, and IGNOU.

K V Rabiya, whose tough frame has become the face of Kerala's adult literacy campaign, passed away at her residence in Malappuram on Sunday. She was 59.

From Vellikakkad, Malappuram district, Rabiya struggled through hardships and personal losses, right from childhood days itself, to work tireless in the cause of the differently abled and inspired a thousand women to enter the field of writing.

She was awarded the Padma Shri award for social work in 2022.

Even at the age of 12, as a school-going girl, Rabiya fell victim to polio, which would go on to paralyze her below the waist and leave her paraplegic. Not discouraged by this, she finished school and enrolled in a college. She was not able to finish the degree course, however.

Rabiya then plunged into books, reading science to literature. Wheelchair-bound now, Rabiya also began teaching tuition classes to local children for a nominal charge.

It was by chance that Rabiya was involved with Kerala's literacy movement, which started in the late 1980s. It had to be a college certificate holder for becoming a teacher for literacy. But a teacher, not able to pursue the course, requested help from Rabiya. And this was the beginning of a social worker and the beginning of her legacy.

She began teaching literacy classes in June 1990, and local housewives and elderly women were her pupils. She tried to persuade orthodox family women of the importance of education, and narrated motivational stories of global leaders and social reformers to pique their interest in taking her classes.

When her roll of students began to increase, Rabiya became a full-time literacy teacher. Subsequently, she also set up a women's library and played a key role in the progress of her region, which lacked basic facilities like roads and electricity, telephone, and water supply.

She later started a voluntary organization called Chalanam (movement), which also organized literary programs.

Her intervention was not confined to literacy only. She initiated six special schools for children and empowered and trained over 250 women through a small-scale production unit. She was just as much of a trendsetter in the movement against dowry and superstitions. In the following years, she was also a part of the e-literacy project, Akshaya, in Malappuram.

In 2000, Rabiya also developed cancer, but regained her health and went on to do social work later.

The inspirational life story of how she made her dreams come true was chronicled by Rabiya in her autobiography, Swapnangalkku Chirakukalundu (Dreams Have Wings). She wrote four other books apart from the memoir, Mouna Nombarangal (Silent Pains). There was also a film documentary on her life, titled Rabiya Moves.

She was awarded several awards, the Kannagi Devi Stree Shakti Puraskar, initiated by the Union government's Child Welfare Department, in 2000. She received the Youth Volunteer against Poverty award, initiated by the Union Youth Affairs Ministry along with the United Nations Development Programme.

In a significant relief to eight medical graduates, the Madhya Pradesh High Court has granted them permission to sit for the Pre-Postgraduate (Pre-PG) medical entrance examination even though they hadn't completed the internship period so far. The order, which was passed sometime earlier this week, has been welcomed as a timely intervention by the physicians who were in danger of losing eligibility to sit for the test on account of exceptional circumstances.

Pre-PG exam is a vital stepping stone for doctors who have aspirations to seek postgraduate courses of specialisation and hence is a matter of high stakes in a highly competitive world. The doctors had approached court after the authorities had labelled them ineligible following their being found to lack completion of internship status—a requirement otherwise mandatory.

Referencing circumstances outside their control, i.e., bureaucratic or systemic inefficiencies resulting in delays, the petitioners contended that debarment from the exam would not only deprive them of their education and professional development but also be unjust in consideration of the break they experienced.

In its judgment, the High Court firmly reiterated the tension between procedural compliance and fairness. Even though the court was reluctant to uphold the regime of regulation calling for completion of internship, the court acknowledged that in exceptional circumstances—i.e., where delay is not students' fault—there is sufficient good cause to exercise discretion not to inflict unreasonable hardship.

The court order has permitted the eight doctors to sit for the examination on a provisional basis. The authorities have been asked to make no permanent admissions or appointments until and unless the doctors complete the internship as requested.

Health care workers and students throughout the state have greeted the ruling as a compassionate response in a system that has been attacked as rigid. Legal analysts note that while the ruling is temporary, it also maintains the principle that educational regulations must be applied discreetly and exceptions only to actual cases.

With the doctors available to sit their Pre-PG exams, the case has touched off broader controversy over policy modifications required to respond to unforeseen delays in medical training so as not to threaten any student's career due to circumstances beyond them.

The Anti-Corruption Bureau’s (ACB) recent registration of a corruption case against senior Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders Manish Sisodia and Satyendar Jain marks a serious escalation in the scrutiny of Delhi’s much-celebrated education reforms. Both former ministers—Sisodia, who handled the education portfolio, and Jain, who oversaw the Public Works Department (PWD)—are accused of involvement in an alleged Rs 2,000 crore scam linked to the construction of 12,748 classrooms and related infrastructure in government schools.

The project was widely regarded as AAP's display of governance, a badge of pride attesting to its willingness to transform public schooling. However, the ACB revelations created a different impression. The inquiry revealed colossal discrepancies in estimated and real costs, gigantic project delays, and procedural failure, officials claimed. And above all, no building work is supposedly undertaken within its statutory timeframe. More seriously, consultants and architects-keystones to the project implementation-were reportedly appointed without following the tendering procedure, thereby paving the way for unbridled inflation of costs by means of such middlemen. The case has been registered after due sanction was granted under Section 17-A of the Prevention of Corruption Act, indicative of the gravity with which the charges are being probed.

From the perspective of political analysis, the step centers on AAP's political image core.

The party had constructed an image as clean and anti-corruption during its formative days and continued to invoke its track record of accomplishment in schools as proof of its agenda of change. If the charges stand up, they'd probably finish off the reputation for good, inviting uncomfortable questions regarding checks and balances in the Delhi government. The case also identifies a wider government-run public projects system failure: vulnerability to runaway costs and regulation avoidance.

An industry that requires financial prudence and perfection, like education, is most vulnerable to misuse when vast investment is being undertaken without clear checks and balances. That the fees are collected on overcosted cost of construction, not on educational achievement as such, shows the lacuna between overly enthusiastic policy making and discredited efforts at execution. Politically, the implications are astronomical. AAP, ever expanding its national wings, is now subject to growing opposition party criticism, who will find it natural to hold on to this case as evidence of charges of alleged hypocrisy between what the party has promised and how it has de facto ruled. For Sisodia and Jain—both the brains behind AAP's governance plan—the case is a court matter but also a political testing ground of their abilities and mettle.

AAP, however, will most likely approach the question as political, a path it has taken before when it clashed with the powers. But the definition and range of the charges, and the ACB's charge of procedural mistakes and financial misconduct, are so clearly defined that mere rhetorical posturing will maybe not succeed this time around in reversing public sentiment.

Short of the courts finally ruling on culpability, though, the case has already sparked a huge controversy regarding the government, accountability, and the dangers of having high-profile public projects. It is a reminder that transparency and procedural integrity must always be absolute pillars, especially when public funds and basic services like education are involved.

Nine transgenders of a school in Odisha's Bhadrak district have passed the Odisha class 10 board examination.

The nine transgenders among two lesbian students of Sarojini Sanskruta Vidyalaya at Boualpokhari, Charmpa in Bhadrak Municipality passed the Class 10 examination, the results of which were declared on Friday, overcoming social odds and stigma to succeed, according to the headmaster of the school, Malayranjan Panda.

The educational success of - Riya Sahi, Jitu Swain, Jadunatha Hansda, Sanjana Samal, Sasmita Bindhani, Ashirbad Sahoo, Rajkishor Das, Sima Tangur and Sandhya Champia - was not educational, but personal, as initially they were even boycotted by their respective families, claimed Panda.

But now, with the declaration of results of the class 10 board exams, luck has once again changed in their direction. Telephone calls, blessings, and positive words began flowing in, reuniting the nine students with their family members who had abandoned them earlier, he said.

"I have been absent from my home at Khallikote, Ganjam district for the past five years," Riya Sahu said.

"Like me, all others have also come here from other parts of Odisha. We are staying in a rented house near the school. Despite humiliation and social stigma and other difficulties, our mental resilience and support from the school, helped us to clear the matriculation exam," she further added.

On being questioned, Riya said, "I want to study more and live with dignity."

All Odisha Transgender Welfare Association extended warm congratulations to the students on their remarkable achievement.

The remaining transgender students cheered in chorus. Ashribad Sahu said, "People said that we were not good enough because of our body structure. But we disproved them. I wish to study further and obtain a government job to live a good life in the future."

"Most of these students were forced earlier to beg or sing on the streets for survival. They fought against odds, took rented accommodations near the school, and worked hard. Their success proves that with opportunity and support, they can achieve anything," stated Sommya Das, head of Bhadrak Transgender Surakshya Samiti.

Soumya also attributed the role of local NGOs and the government's transgender welfare fund in supporting the education of the students.

"Few repeated class 9 due to personal problems, but they never lost hope. They were provided with special attention and mentoring, and this helped them believe in themselves," Soumya explained.

Their success is a beacon of hope and inspiration of how education is capable of transforming lives. These nine students passed not only an exam—but broke barriers and changed minds, Das said.