'Paper leak mafia won't be spared,' PM Modi says after anti-paper leak Bill clears Parliament
The Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill, 2026 completed its passage through both Houses of Parliament, clearing the Lok Sabha by voice vote on 29 July 2026 and the Rajya Sabha on 30 July 2026.
The Bill amends the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024, sharply raising the custodial and monetary penalties for individuals, organised examination-fraud syndicates, and private examination service providers.
Beyond penalties, the Bill empowers the central government to constitute a special task force to investigate offences under the Act and provides for the appointment of special public prosecutors to conduct these trials.
Having cleared both Houses, the Bill now moves to the President for assent, the final step before it becomes law.
The government cited 52 FIRs registered under the original 2024 Act as evidence of the law's operational uptake since enactment.
Ordinary Bills and the President's Assent — Article 111
A Bill other than a Money Bill must be passed in identical form by both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha before it is presented to the President. Article 111 of the Constitution then gives the President three options: give assent, withhold assent, or (for a non-Money Bill) return it once to the Houses for reconsideration; if Parliament passes the Bill again, with or without the suggested amendments, the President is constitutionally required to give assent on that second presentation.
Key Details
- The Public Examinations Amendment Bill, 2026 is an ordinary Bill (not a Money Bill), so it could, in principle, have been returned for reconsideration; having passed both Houses, it now awaits the President's decision under Article 111.
- The Constitution does not prescribe a time limit within which the President must act on a Bill. In a November 2025 advisory opinion on a Presidential Reference (under Article 143), the Supreme Court held that no judicially enforceable timelines can be read into Articles 111 (President) or 200/201 (Governors) for assenting to Bills, and that such decisions are not justiciable — clarifying an earlier 2025 ruling that had briefly imposed a three-month timeline.
- This distinguishes the President's discretion on Union Bills from the fixed, court-tested urgency that applies to Governors' delay on State Bills, a frequently tested contrast in Indian federalism.
The Bill's next and final step is Presidential assent under Article 111; there is no constitutional deadline by which this must occur, though conventionally assent to non-controversial government Bills follows quickly.
Statutory Task Forces and Special Public Prosecutors
Specialised criminal statutes in India frequently supplement ordinary policing and prosecution machinery with dedicated investigative and prosecutorial structures, on the reasoning that offences requiring technical expertise or rapid cross-jurisdictional action are poorly served by the general criminal process alone.
Key Details
- The 2026 Amendment authorises the central government to set up a special task force specifically to investigate offences of unfair means in public examinations, in addition to the Special Fast-Track Courts the 2024 Act framework already contemplates.
- It also provides for special public prosecutors to be appointed for these cases — a device also used under laws such as the NDPS Act, 1985 and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, where the state appoints prosecutors with case-specific expertise rather than relying solely on standing public prosecutors.
- These structures operate alongside, not in place of, ordinary criminal procedure under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), 2023, which replaced the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.
The task force and special-prosecutor provisions are additions in the 2026 amendment beyond the pure penalty enhancement, aimed at strengthening the investigation-to-prosecution chain for exam-fraud cases nationally.
The National Testing Agency and Centrally Conducted Examinations
Much of the public examination ecosystem that this Act protects is run by the National Testing Agency (NTA), the body that conducts India's largest centralised entrance examinations, making it directly relevant to the exam-integrity legislation covered here.
Key Details
- The NTA was approved for establishment in November 2017 and became operational in September 2018; it is registered as a society under the Societies Registration Act, 1860, functioning as an autonomous, self-sustaining testing body under the Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Education.
- It conducts national-level entrance examinations including JEE Main and NEET-UG (medical admissions), among others, on behalf of the central government and central institutions.
- As a body conducting public examinations, the NTA and its processes fall squarely within the scope of "unfair means" offences defined under the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024, and now the enhanced 2026 penalty regime.
The tightened penalties and new task-force/prosecutor mechanisms are designed to cover exactly this kind of centrally conducted, high-stakes examination ecosystem where question-paper leaks have institutional and public-trust consequences.
- Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill, 2026: passed Lok Sabha by voice vote on 29 July 2026; passed Rajya Sabha on 30 July 2026.
- Amends the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024 — India's first dedicated central law criminalising exam malpractice.
- New provisions beyond penalty enhancement: a central special task force for investigation, and special public prosecutors for trial.
- 52 FIRs registered under the original 2024 Act, cited by the government as evidence of enforcement activity.
- Next step: Presidential assent under Article 111; no constitutional deadline applies, per the Supreme Court's November 2025 advisory opinion on Presidential References under Article 143.