Every examination in India is held on a single day; randomisation would allow testing across multiple days.

Our finding

Why we rated this “False”

Multi-day examinations already run at scale

The claim proposes multi-day randomised scheduling as a reform not yet adopted. It describes what several major examinations already do.

SSC's CGL 2025 accommodated 13.5 lakh candidates across 255 centres in 126 cities, spread over 45 shifts and 15 examination days. [2]

Railway NTPC undergraduate recruitment ran across 19 days and 57 shifts. Railway Level-1 computer-based testing extended from 27 November 2025 to 10 February 2026 — a window of more than two months. [3]

CUET and a range of computer-based recruitment examinations likewise operate across multiple dates, shifts and centres. UGC-NET's 2024 re-examination was conducted between 21 August and 5 September. [1]

Why the format was adopted

Multi-day, multi-shift testing exists because single-day examination at this scale is impractical and insecure.

Seating 13.5 lakh candidates simultaneously requires physical capacity that does not exist in most cities. Spreading the same examination across days and shifts uses existing centres repeatedly, which is what makes national-scale testing feasible at all.

It also improves security in the way the claim intends. When candidates sit different papers in different shifts, a leaked paper compromises one shift rather than the entire examination.

The problem this format creates

Splitting an examination across shifts introduces a fairness question that the claim does not address, and it is the harder half of the design problem.

Different shifts get different question papers. Papers of genuinely equal difficulty are almost impossible to construct. Without correction, a candidate who draws a harder paper is penalised for scheduling rather than performance — and that grievance has driven a great deal of litigation.

SSC applies equi-percentile normalisation to correct for this, alongside digital-vault transmission, Aadhaar authentication and computer-based delivery safeguards. [4]

Normalisation is a statistical adjustment, and no adjustment is perfect. How well it works, and whether candidates find it transparent, is a legitimate ongoing argument.

Where the claim goes wrong

Multi-day randomised examination is presented as an unadopted reform. It is current practice across SSC, Railways, CUET and other major examinations, and has been for years.

The reform question that remains open

Since the format is already in use, the useful question is not whether to adopt it but how well it is working.

That means asking whether normalisation across shifts is accurate and explicable to candidates; whether centre allocation reasonably limits travel; whether the long windows now used — over two months in the Railway Level-1 case — disadvantage candidates tested late, who must sustain preparation while others have finished; and whether question banks are deep enough to supply genuinely comparable papers across dozens of shifts.

Those are real problems with real solutions, and none of them can be discussed while the premise is that the format has not been adopted.

In short

SSC CGL 2025 ran over 15 days and 45 shifts; Railway NTPC over 19 days and 57 shifts. Multi-day, multi-shift examination is standard practice — the live issue is normalising fairly across those shifts.