NMTC 2026 Comes to Kolkata: Cheenta Hosts the Preliminary Round at Mitra Institution

On 30th August 2026, young mathematics enthusiasts across Kolkata gathered at Mitra Institution (Main) for the preliminary round of the National Mathematics Talent Contest (NMTC) — one of India's longest-running mathematical olympiads. Cheenta took charge of conducting the exam in the city, with invigilation handled by Deepan Dutta, Raghunath J V, Shilpa Bera, Taniya Das and Sukdeb Mahato.

A Contest Rooted in History

NMTC is organised annually by the Association of Mathematics Teachers of India (AMTI), founded in 1965 to strengthen mathematics teaching and spot young talent nationwide. The contest itself has run since 1968, making 2026 roughly its 58th edition. What began as a regional initiative out of Tamil Nadu has grown into a national event, with well over a hundred thousand students from hundreds of schools sitting the screening test each year.

Over the decades, NMTC has become a recognised stepping stone in India's olympiad pipeline. Strong performers, especially at the Junior and Inter levels, often go on to represent their states at the Indian National Mathematics Olympiad (INMO), and from there to India's international olympiad teams.

Inside the Competition

NMTC is split into five age-based categories, each named after a mathematician: Primary (Gauss), Sub-Junior (Kaprekar), Junior (Bhaskara), Inter (Ramanujan), and Senior (Aryabhata), covering students from Standard V all the way through undergraduate level. The Preliminary Test — the round held this weekend — is a two-hour paper mixing multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank questions, deliberately weighted toward difficulty: roughly a fifth of the questions are straightforward, while the rest demand real problem-solving. Only the top tenth of performers make it through to the Final Test, a longer three-hour paper that pushes further into advanced territory.

Kolkata's leg of this national exercise played out at Mitra Institution (Main), with Cheenta's invigilators ensuring the paper ran smoothly for the city's participating students.

How Cheenta Prepares Students

The exam day itself was only the visible part of a longer effort. In the weeks leading up to it, Cheenta ran a series of offline workshops at its Lake Place centre, giving students structured practice with the kind of unconventional, creative problems NMTC is built around — quite different from the routine drilling most school classrooms focus on.

This reflects Cheenta's broader approach to olympiad training: mathematical creativity is a skill that has to be practised through discussion, mistakes, and mentor feedback, not just picked up from a textbook. Through small-group problem-solving sessions at Lake Place, Cheenta has been helping students build the instincts they need — not just for NMTC, but for the longer olympiad journey that follows it, from RMO to INMO and beyond.

What the Curriculum Covers

NMTC draws its syllabus from pre-degree college mathematics, organised broadly around four areas: Algebra, Geometry, Number Theory, and Graph Theory & Combinatorics. Algebra questions typically involve polynomials, equations, inequalities, and complex numbers. Geometry centres on triangles and circles, and can often be approached through trigonometric, vector, complex-number, or transformation methods — giving students room to choose the technique that suits them best. Number theory and combinatorics round out the paper, rewarding pattern recognition and clean logical argument over formula recall.

Looking Ahead

With the preliminary round complete, Kolkata's NMTC aspirants now wait for results, while qualifiers begin preparing for the Final Test. For Cheenta, the Lake Place workshops and the exam day at Mitra Institution are two halves of the same effort — helping local students engage with mathematics as a creative pursuit, one contest at a time.