Nandan Nilekani proposes AI-driven last-minute question paper generation to prevent leaks

Heading the high-powered task force on examination reforms, constituted in the wake of the NEET-UG paper leak row, Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani said Tuesday that one of the solutions is to create a bank of question papers and generate the question paper at the last minute for that day. “Why do we need to have something called “a” question paper?

Because the moment you have “a” question paper, then that creates an economic incentive for that to be sold or whatever. So the way to do that is to have a massive bank of question papers, and only at the last minute generate the question paper for that day. Then the question paper does not go away and there is no economic incentive for that,” Nilekani said during an interaction at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum 2026 in New Delhi.

The six-member high-powered task force was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi a day after Dharmendra Pradhan resigned as Union Education Minister on July 25, following massive student protests led by the Cockroach Janta Party at Jantar Mantar. The committee was given three months to submit its report.

While Nilekani did not disclose the content of the report, he said the Prime Minister is very keen in implementing their decision. He said the number of locations for computer-based testing should be increased. “The other thing is to ensure how the exams are done on the basis of computer-based testing, and that requires a network of locations.

We have 150,000 locations, where students take a test. That needs to be expanded. These are systemic issues, which we will address in our committee, and I think the Prime Minister is very keen to implement our suggestions,” he said. Currently, the exam centres are given to vendors on lease.

Since the government is planning to shift to computer-based testing, it will be required to strengthen the infrastructure with security, IT tools, internet and other facilities. Nilekani said if the problem of paper leak is looked at systematically, going into the root cause, it is a solvable issue.

Asked if he imagined a scenario where AI spontaneously creates exam papers on the day of examination, he said, “Yeah, sure.” A recent parliamentary committee report on ‘Reforms and Strengthening of the National Testing Agency’ also recommended that the NTA invest in building a large, diverse and continuously updated question bank which can be drawn upon to set papers without the advance knowledge of the question-setters, and that final question papers should be set very close to the examination, with questions drawn from the question bank using digital tools and only vetted by experts.

It said investment in question banks is the most viable defence against paper leaks in the long-run and the repeated use of the same question sets or the practice of having examiners set new question papers every year can be a risk to the integrity of the examination . With the government planning to migrate from pen-and-paper mode of examination to computer-based testing, the NTA has asked the AICTE to look for spaces across all government technical institutions for setting up standard testing centres to conduct examinations.

A senior government official said the task force is currently reviewing the suggestions it has received and the final report will be submitted by the end of this month. The task force has held about 18 meetings at the panel level along with 40 consultative meetings since its formation.

It has received over 50,000 suggestions from different sectors.