Education
Aaj Tak launches a platform to help students in skill development
Mumbai: Aaj Tak India’s no 1 news channel has launched ‘Aaj Tak Campus’ (ATC). It is a one-stop online guide for college admissions and competitive exams, offering creative solutions to students for career planning and skill-building.
The platform provides students with an opportunity to take an Aaj Tak Campus National Aptitude Test (ATCNAT). This unique online exam will enable students to analyse their level of preparation for the entrance exams of their choice. One can take the test after registering on the https://www.aajtakcampus.in.
The catalogue of the exam covers JEE, NEET, CLAT, IPMAT, CUET, SSC-CHSL, SSC-CGL, UPSC-CSE, Bank PO, Bank Clerk.
Participating students will be given an achievement certificate and a test outcome which will include a comprehensive analysis report, including subject-wise breakdown, percentile, and more.
Top rank holders of each category will also feature on the digital platforms of India Today and Aaj Tak.
Education
Abhishek Singh appointed director general of National Testing Agency
Technocrat with deep roots in India’s digital infrastructure push takes charge of the exam body that has faced intense scrutiny
NEW DELHI: India’s beleaguered examination authority has a new boss. Abhishek Singh, currently director general of the National Informatics Centre (NIC), has been appointed director general of the National Testing Agency (NTA), which sits under the Ministry of Education. In a signal of just how seriously the government is treating the role, the post has been temporarily upgraded to the rank and pay of secretary to the government of India.
Singh is not your typical bureaucrat shuffled sideways into a troubled institution. At the NIC, he also held additional charge as additional secretary in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), overseeing artificial intelligence, emerging technologies and the Digital India Bhashini division, while simultaneously serving as chief executive of the India AI Mission. That is a formidable technology portfolio by any measure.
His CV reads like a guided tour of India’s digital public infrastructure. He served as president and chief executive of the National e-Governance Division, managing director and chief executive of Digital India Corporation, chief executive of Karmayogi Bharat, and chief executive of MyGov between 2019 and 2024. Before that, from 2014 to 2017, he was executive director at the Food Corporation of India, where he handled information technology, engineering, storage and, additionally, the North Zone operations and the role of chief vigilance officer.
His field credentials are equally robust. Singh has served in both Nagaland and Uttar Pradesh across multiple tenures, navigating law and order, floods, droughts and communal tensions with equal measure. As principal secretary to the chief minister of Nagaland between 2017 and 2019, he also held charge of urban development, personnel and administrative reforms, and, in 2018, home commissioner. At the grassroots, he built roads, irrigation systems, schools and hospitals, and drove welfare programmes focused on poverty alleviation, education and healthcare.
Singh has also worked alongside international agencies including DFID, UNICEF and WHO, contributing to the Child’s Environment Project in Budaun and the Pulse Polio Eradication Programme in Uttar Pradesh. He has conducted elections at the parliamentary, state assembly and local body levels.
Academically, he is no slouch either. Singh holds a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard Kennedy School, where he was a Mason Fellow, and completed his B.Tech and M.Tech from IIT Kanpur.
Meanwhile, the broader bureaucratic reshuffle sees Bihar cadre IAS officer Chanchal Kumar named the new secretary in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Rohit Kansal of the UT cadre moves to the Rural Development Ministry as special secretary, while IAS officer Vikram Yadav has been appointed director general of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation. The outgoing I&B secretary has been reassigned as secretary in the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region.
The NTA needed someone who could rewire both its credibility and its systems. Singh has spent a career doing exactly that.
