NEW DELHI — More than 22.79 lakh candidates re-sat a national entrance examination this week, seven weeks after the agency conducting it cancelled the original over a paper leak, in an arrangement officials described as giving the testing body the second chance it needed.

Ahead of the re-examination, held across 551 cities, the agency conducted a nationwide mock drill and deployed what it called a multi-layered security framework: more than 1.38 lakh CCTV cameras, AI-based live monitoring, 51,311 signal jammers, and over two lakh personnel, assembled to protect a single document the same agency had been unable to protect on its own premises in May. An official said the scale of the deployment reflected the seriousness with which the agency now treated the integrity it had previously misplaced.

Under the arrangement, the candidates absorb the cost of the failure, repeating months of preparation so the institution responsible can be seen to have improved. Officials noted the division of labour — the body that failed ran a security drill while the candidates who did nothing wrong sat the exam again — was consistent with precedent, the agency having cancelled or postponed several major examinations in recent years.

A spokesperson expressed confidence the new measures would prevent any recurrence, at least until the next one, and thanked the candidates for their patience in helping the agency rebuild trust in itself. The jammers, he added, had performed flawlessly, blocking every signal except the original leak, which took place in advance.