Around 9 am at Udyog Bhavan in Latur city, small groups of students carrying spiral-bound notes walk past giant banners, counselling offices and hostel buildings.

This is the city’s ‘Tuition Area’, the coaching hub that’s sold as the starting block for the race of a lifetime: a seat in one of the premier engineering and medical colleges in the country. Now, in the midst of one of the worst scandals to rock the town — the paper leak of the National Eligibility and Entrance Test or NEET exam for entry into medical colleges — the race stands disrupted. For the first time since NEET began in 2016, the exam had to be cancelled and rescheduled.

The probe took the CBI investigators from Sikar, where the case first unravelled, to Latur, which is emerging as a key node in the scandal. So far, two of the 10 arrested are from Latur — Shivraj Maotegaonkar, the founder of a coaching institute, and retired chemistry lecturer Pralhad Kulkarni.

But as is evident in Latur, it won’t be long before the coaching hub gets back on track.

May, the period after the NEET examinations, is usually a quieter period in the city. This time, though, some institutes have resumed classes for ReNEET, the reexamination scheduled for June 21. As parents and students make enquiries for the next academic cycle, one prominent absence stands out — the building of ‘RCC Classes’, once among the busiest centres in the area, is now shut following the arrest of founder Motegaonkar.

Yet, the ecosystem in Latur continues to function. Mess kitchens remain active; hostels house “repeater students” and those attending ReNEET-related sessions; flex boards with all-India toppers and faculty advertisements hang across narrow lanes lined with stationery shops, libraries and food stalls. Through all this, the students move — some wearing black shirts with red collars, others in  blue T-shirts with institute logos, their backpacks hanging from tired shoulders. Some walk towards giant coaching complexes promising NEET ranks and IIT success, others emerge from hostel buildings built over homes.

Unlike Rajasthan’s Kota, which started as a coaching hub for competitive exams, Latur’s story began in the 1970s and 80s, inside the classrooms of its old junior colleges such as Rajarshi Shahu College and Dayanand Science College. Here, teachers didn’t tailor their teaching to the entrance exam system but were driven by something far more egalitarian — identifying poor students with promise and working on their fundamentals to prepare them for the Maharashtra Board exams.

This model, centred around repeated testing, revision sessions, close teacher monitoring and hostel-linked academic supervision, soon came to be known as ‘Latur Pattern’.

The results began to show by the 1990s and early 2000s, when students from Latur began appearing on merit lists of Class 10 and 12 state Board examinations.

The district became particularly known for its science education, with students from rural Marathwada securing admissions into engineering and medical colleges.

Babruwan Kishanrao Gomsale counts himself as a product of that system. Gomsale, who later worked in engineering services at ONGC, says he had dropped out after Class 10 because his family could not afford his further education. “Then, one day, two teachers from Shahu College came looking for me in our village and took me to the college. I initially refused because we had no money. But they told me I could study under the ‘earn and learn’ system — stay at the college, do small jobs like preparing food for students, fetching water, etc. and study as well,” he says. “Our teachers guided us continuously through tests, revision, counselling and personal mentoring.”

Dr Sopan Jatal, who owns a hospital in Latur, recalls a similar experience. “The foundation of the Latur Pattern was not coaching classes. It was the culture of continuous study, discipline and personal attention created by schools and colleges,” Jatal says.

But today, the ‘Latur Pattern’ stands at a crossroads, caught between its legacy of educational excellence and an aggressive coaching economy worth hundreds of crores.

The transformation started around 2000, coinciding with the rise of the state Common Entrance Tests (CET) for admission to medical and engineering, followed by NEET and other NCERT-based entrance examinations that started in 2012-13.

“The teaching in junior colleges focused mostly on the Maharashtra Board examinations and the state CET, but NEET and JEE increasingly became NCERT-based and concept-oriented, with multiple choice questions. That gap created space for private coaching institutes. Until then, students here were not merely coached for examinations, they were shaped academically and personally,” says Sachin Bangad, an educational counsellor in Latur.

Madhur Chitte, a resident of Latur who earlier ran a study room for students, says the city changed rapidly after 2000.

“Earlier, there were traditional subject-based tuitions. Students would go to separate teachers for specific subjects. Students would come to my study room to sit and study and we would counsel them,” he says.

That changed, says Chitte, with a full-fledged organised coaching system taking over, where everything from hostel accommodation to mess facilities are coordinated by the institute.

Latur’s Rajarshi Shahu College, which once focused on the state Board exams, adapted to the change by integrating its Class 11 and 12 education with NEET and JEE preparation.

The Science wing of the college, with 1,200 students, is housed in a separate building. Students stay on campus and, after school hours, spend time on CET, NEET and JEE coaching.

Around 10.30 pm on a weekday, as students and teachers sat in one of the classrooms on campus, poring over sample papers and worksheets, there is evidence of the older ‘Latur Pattern’ — continuous testing systems, CET-focused academic cells, hostel-linked mentoring and supervised study routines.

D K Deshmukh, coordinator of the CET Cell at Shahu College, says, “Our focus has never been only on marks. Teachers monitor students closely, repeatedly test concepts and build study-discipline.”

A student, who spoke on condition of anonymity, says the institution’s integrated system offers a different environment compared to the large coaching centres. “Here, we are continuously in touch with the teachers; there are no fixed timings. We live here and also study here. After the ReNEET announcement, teachers counselled and motivated us. They told us to treat the earlier exam as a mock test and prepare again with the same focus,” she said.

Deshmukh says the college receives applications several times higher than its intake capacity of 2,100 students.

Gradually, a parallel structure emerged as students who failed to secure admission to the more prominent junior colleges opted for private coaching institutes.  They would, on paper, take admission in a junior college while spending all their time preparing for NEET-JEE inside coaching institutes.

Like elsewhere in Kota and Sikar, it’s a machine that has delivered results. In the first round of MBBS admissions in Maharashtra in 2025, 1,203 candidates were from Latur,  the highest in the state.

Local educators estimate that around 40,000 students arrive in Latur every year for Class 11-12, NEET and JEE preparation.

Like Kota, entire neighbourhoods in Latur have reorganised themselves around coaching institutes and student housing. In several lanes of the Tuition Area, residential buildings have been partially or fully converted into student hostels that charge anywhere between Rs 25,000 and Rs 2 lakh annually per student.

Local estimates place the annual turnover of Latur’s student economy at over Rs 500 crore.

As the stakes expanded, so did the business of the coaching institutes. Many of them have expanded to provide hostels, mess facilities and other services centred around students.

It’s an ecosystem marketed as “end-to-end service”, but for students, this has meant a life that revolves almost entirely around ranks, mock tests and selection lists.

The students arrive here, from nearly every district of Maharashtra and neighbouring states, some as young as 12. They live in cramped hostels, away from their families, and are told to focus on a single goal — a seat in a medical or engineering college. Students attend classes from early morning till late evening, followed by compulsory study hours, and appear for weekly ranking tests.

Around 5.30 pm, a group of students crowd outside a fast food outlet in the Tuition Area. Many of them are from villages in Marathwada and are now back in Latur for ReNEET.

They talk about life back home and how cracking NEET seems like the only future they have — and the only one they know.

“Most of our families own agricultural land, but because of water scarcity, agriculture alone is not enough. That is why education is important for us,” says one of them.

“Many people say coaching here is expensive, but compared to bigger cities, Latur is still affordable. I pay around

Rs 60,000 a year, while in bigger cities, the fee is much higher. We all come from poor families, so all these things matter to us,” says a student from Hingoli district. He pays Rs 25,000 annually as hostel fee. “Four of us stay in one room. Since all of us are preparing for NEET, we help each other with revision, studying and problem-solving,” he says.

As evening falls, around them, giant NEET and IIT-JEE signboards, promising “100% success”, begin glowing brighter.

After completing his BTech from Kota’s Engineering College in 1996, Shrawan Choudhary decided to launch Career Line Coaching (CLC) in Sikar.

As Sikar grew, so did CLC. In one of his interviews, Choudhary, speaking about what led him to start his institute in Sikar, said Kota’s coaching industry was missing “parental care”. “Sikar has people from rural backgrounds, jo bacche ko tok dete hain (where they pull up a child). If a student comes late to his PG, the owner would pull him up, while Kota has a city culture,” Choudhary said.

CLC’s tagline is ‘Shiksha Sanskar, Suraksha, Safalta’, or ‘education, culture, safety and success’, where the road from education to success passes through culture and safety.

As more centres came up here over the next three decades, this culture of “individual care” became its most advertised USP, setting it apart from Kota, the other giant of India’s coaching industry.

Now, as the NEET-UG leak controversy unfolds, Sikar finds itself at the centre of uncomfortable questions about its vast coaching machinery.

Historically, the Shekhawati region was known for sending youth to the armed forces. Pradeep Budania from Sikar’s Gurukripa coaching classes says there was a time “when a government job here meant a job in the Army”. “First, families sent their children in droves to the Army. Then teaching came up and families pushed their children towards it,” Budania says.

The region was also home to Marwari businessman and industrialist families who, wanting to give back to society, set up trusts to open educational institutions. Around the turn of the millennium, aspirations rose and families gravitated towards MBBS, and by the 2010s, Sikar had emerged as a coaching hub, powered by IITians who had gone through the Kota system.

In 2018, the Maheshwari brothers-led Allen Group set up its 17th coaching centre in the city. Over the next few years, others followed — from Physics Wallah and Unacademy to Aakash Institute.

Soon, Sikar emerged as a cheaper alternative to Kota. According to Piyush Sunda, Director of Prince Career Pioneer, one of the early entrants in the town’s coaching industry, the turning point came after 2020, when Kota reported a string of student suicides, and Sikar marketed itself as a safer learning destination for students.

The next milestone came in 2024, when the Supreme Court asked the National Testing Agency to publish centre-wise data. The data showed that Sikar had 27,216 students appearing for NEET in 2024 — almost the same as Kota’s 27,118. When the final results came in, Sikar had 4,297 students scoring over 600 marks compared to Kota’s 2,599; 2,037 scoring over 650 compared to Kota’s 1,066; and 149 scoring over 700 against Kota’s 74.

Even before this data catapulted Sikar into the limelight, coaching centre administrators claim the city had been outperforming Kota for the last 5-7 years. For proof, they cite NEET and JEE student numbers — 80,000 annually in Sikar compared to around 70,000 in Kota.

Institutes in Sikar cite factors such as their “personal touch”, better access to teachers, attached hostels, monitored self-study, a less crowded environment and a cheaper fee structure as reasons for this.

At a state-of-the-art coaching centre with an attached hostel, students sit in classrooms till at least 10 pm under the watchful eyes of a teacher. “Even if a student is not keen to study but has to sit with a book, then usually they end up studying,” says an administrator.

Students are insulated from the world outside. Mobile phones are disallowed; those wanting to make an audio call to their families can only use wall-mounted phones. Each student’s code brings up two phone numbers and they can choose which one to call on. On another wall nearby are similar wall-mounted phones, these with video-calling facilities. Calls are made in public.

Vikram Bhambu, 30, who runs a hostel for about 120 students, says students “spend only 10% of their time at the coaching centre, and the rest at the hostel. Parents don’t want us to let them roam around.” At his hostel too, students are permitted only basic keypad phones.

All of this, say institutes, sets them apart from Kota. “There is mahauli teaching in Kota… It’s all atmospherics. Personalities are built around teachers. We have expressly told our teachers to stick to the course material and avoid making jokes,” says a senior faculty member at a coaching centre.

While Sikar may market itself as a cheaper, more humane alternative to Kota, it is plagued by many of the same problems, though arguably on a smaller scale.

In September 2025, during a debate on the Bill to regulate coaching centres in the state, Deputy Chief Minister and Higher Education Minister Prem Chand Bairwa quoted data from the previous four years to say that of the 88 students who died by suicide in coaching centres, 70 were in Kota and 14 in Sikar.

The paper leak scam has raised more questions. In an interview after the leak, Allen co-founder and Director Brajesh Maheshwari said Sikar has “always been a suspicious centre”. Alleging that private schools chosen as examination centres work hand in glove with coaching centres, he said: “There were no selections from here when it [Sikar] didn’t have centres. I’m talking openly… Board exam papers and all kinds of papers used to be sold easily”.

But coaching administrators in Sikar deny these allegations, citing NTA’s 2024 data in their defence. The data shows that of the top 50 centres across India where students scored over 650 marks, 37 were in Sikar alone. “How can you influence all 37 centres?” asks Narendra Kok of Sikar’s Matrix Academy.

To put these allegations to rest, the institutes want the NTA to release centre-wise data for the Re-NEET as well, pointing out that Sikar is where the 2026 leak was caught.

Those hit hardest by these events are the students, many of whom have had to return for the rescheduled NEET exam on June 21. At Vikram Bhambhu’s hostel, a dejected Sukhveer Singh, 20, from Ganganagar, says the recent NEET was his second attempt. “I was relaxing at home when news of the paper leak came in. It was shocking. I joined a library to study, but it wasn’t working out. My parents told me to try once more,” he says.

Sitting next to him, Narendra Kumar, 19, also from Ganganagar, says he did not want to return. “My first thought was: I will again have to lose sleep, go through the same books, the same process.”