Examination Authorities

National Testing Agency

The National Testing Agency is an autonomous body under the Ministry of Education, set up in 2017 to take entrance testing off the boards and councils that had been running it alongside their own work. It conducted its first examinations in 2018 and now runs most of India's national entrance tests — JEE Main, NEET UG, CUET at both levels, UGC-NET, CMAT and others — as computer-based tests at centres across the country. It sets no admission policy of its own: it conducts the examination and reports the scores, and the institutions and councils that asked for it decide what those scores mean.

Staff Selection Commission

The Staff Selection Commission recruits for Group B and Group C posts across central government ministries, departments and offices — the work that does not go through UPSC. It was set up on 4 November 1975 as the Subordinate Services Commission and took its present name on 26 September 1977, when its brief widened beyond subordinate posts. It is an attached office of the Department of Personnel and Training, headquartered in New Delhi, and runs a separate examination for each category of post it fills — CGL for graduate-level posts, CHSL for Class 12 level, and others for specific recruitments such as Junior Engineers or Constables in the central armed police forces.

Institute of Banking Personnel Selection

The Institute of Banking Personnel Selection runs the common recruitment process that most public-sector banks in India use to hire Probationary Officers, Clerks and Specialist Officers, rather than each bank testing candidates on its own. It traces back to 1975, when the Reserve Bank of India and the Indian Banks' Association set up Personnel Selection Services to design a common testing process for banks newly nationalised six years earlier; it was registered as an independent society in 1984 and took its current name then. It began the Common Written Examination in 2011, and a candidate who clears it is not hired by IBPS itself — it ranks candidates and the participating banks do the hiring.

Institute of Chartered Accountants of India

The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India is the statutory body that regulates the Chartered Accountancy profession in the country. The Chartered Accountants Act, 1949 created it, and it began functioning on 1 July 1949 under what is now the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. It alone confers the Chartered Accountant qualification in India, which it does by running the three-stage CA course — Foundation, Intermediate and Final — each with its own examination, alongside a period of practical training a candidate completes between stages. Its elected and nominated Council, created by the same Act, governs the Institute and sets the course's structure.

State Bank of India

The State Bank of India is the country's largest public-sector bank, and the oldest by descent: it traces to the Bank of Calcutta, founded in 1806, which merged with two other presidency banks in 1921 to form the Imperial Bank of India. The State Bank of India Act, 1955 transformed the Imperial Bank into SBI, with the Reserve Bank of India taking a controlling interest; the change took effect on 1 July 1955. It recruits Probationary Officers and Clerks through its own examinations, run separately from the common process the other public-sector banks share through IBPS.

Central Board of Secondary Education

The Central Board of Secondary Education is India's national school board, headquartered in Delhi and working under the Ministry of Education. It traces back to 1929 and took its present national form in 1962. It affiliates roughly 30,000 schools in India and around 240 more abroad, sets their curriculum from Class I to Class XII, and conducts the Class 10 and Class 12 board examinations that most of those students sit each February to April, with results in May. It no longer conducts entrance examinations — JEE Main and NEET passed to the National Testing Agency in 2019 — so what it publishes now is curriculum, circulars to affiliated schools, and the conduct of the board examinations.

The New India Assurance Company

The New India Assurance Company is a public-sector general insurer, headquartered in Mumbai. It was founded in 1919 and nationalised in 1973 under the General Insurance Business (Nationalisation) Act, and it remains majority-owned by the Government of India. It recruits its own Administrative Officers and Assistants through recurring recruitment exercises; IBPS hosts the online application, but the examinations, results and notices are the Company's, published on newindia.co.in.

Consortium of National Law Universities

The Consortium of National Law Universities exists to run one admission test, CLAT, on behalf of the National Law Universities that had previously taken turns conducting it themselves. Formed on 19 August 2017, it brought that rotating, inconsistent arrangement under one body; nearly all of India's National Law Universities are members, the chief exception being National Law University, Delhi, which continues to admit through its own test, AILET. Each year's CLAT is overseen by a Convenor Vice-Chancellor who rotates among the member universities, with a permanent secretariat established at NLSIU Bangalore.

All India Institute of Medical Sciences

The All India Institute of Medical Sciences was created by Act of Parliament in 1956 — Act No. 25 of that year — which declared it an Institute of National Importance in its own text, a status since extended to the newer AIIMS campuses set up under the same Act at other locations. AIIMS New Delhi, the original campus, conducts INI-CET on behalf of the AIIMS group and the other Institutes of National Importance — JIPMER and PGIMER among them — a common entrance test for their MD, MS and super-specialty seats. A seat at a medical college outside this group is a separate admission, through NEET PG rather than INI-CET.

Indian Institutes of Management

The Indian Institutes of Management are a group of public management institutes, the first of them — IIM Calcutta — founded in November 1961 with support from the MIT Sloan School of Management, the West Bengal government, the Ford Foundation and Indian industry; IIM Ahmedabad followed weeks later the same year. For decades each ran independently, conferring diplomas rather than degrees. The Indian Institutes of Management Act, 2017 changed both of those things at once: it declared the IIMs Institutes of National Importance and gave them the power to grant degrees. CAT, their common entrance test, is conducted each year by one IIM on behalf of the rest, on a rotation.

Life Insurance Corporation of India

The Life Insurance Corporation of India is the country's largest life insurer. It was created in 1956 by the Life Insurance Corporation of India Act, which nationalised the life insurance business and merged more than two hundred insurers into one corporation. It is headquartered in Mumbai, remains majority-owned by the Government of India, and has been listed on the stock exchanges since 2022. It recruits for itself rather than through a common process: its officer examinations, results and notices are its own, published on licindia.in.

National Institute of Fashion Technology

The National Institute of Fashion Technology is a public institute of design, fashion and technology under the Ministry of Textiles. It was set up in 1986 and became a statutory institute under the National Institute of Fashion Technology Act, 2006, which lets it award its own degrees. It admits students to its bachelor's and master's programmes across its campuses through an entrance examination that the National Testing Agency conducts on its behalf, and runs the counselling and seat allotment itself.

XLRI Jamshedpur

XLRI — Xavier School of Management, formerly the Xavier Labour Relations Institute — was founded in Jamshedpur in 1949 by Fr. Quinn Enright of the Society of Jesus, and is run by the Jesuits to this day. It is among the oldest business schools in India, opening first with courses in industrial relations before adding a full-time postgraduate programme in the 1950s. XAT, its entrance test, decides admission to XLRI's own programmes and is also used by a wider group of other management institutes that have adopted it, setting it apart from an institution-specific test by the range of programmes a single sitting can lead to.

Central Seat Allocation Board

The Central Seat Allocation Board runs the rounds that come after JoSAA closes. Seats fall vacant at the NITs, IIITs and other government-funded technical institutes when candidates withdraw or fail to report, and CSAB fills them through special rounds held in July and August. It also runs the supernumerary rounds for candidates from the North Eastern states and the Union Territories, which are additional seats rather than a share of the general pool. For a candidate this is the last route into that group of institutions in a given year.

Joint Seat Allocation Authority

The Joint Seat Allocation Authority conducts no examination. It was set up in 2015 by the Ministry of Education to do the step that comes after one: allocating seats across roughly 120 institutions — the IITs, NITs, IIITs and other government-funded technical institutes — from a single pool rather than each running its own admissions. A candidate enters their ranks from JEE Main and JEE Advanced, lists the programmes they want in order of preference, and JoSAA runs several rounds of allocation over June and July, each round moving candidates up their own lists as seats above them are vacated.