NEET-UG: Punjab's Aryan Gupta, Haryana’s Panshul Bansal emerge topper; 11.21 lakh candidates qualify

NEW DELHI: Punjab's Aryan Gupta and Haryana's Panshul Bansal topped the NEET-UG for medical admissions with 11.21 lakh candidates qualifying the entrance exam this year, the National Testing Agency announced on Thursday.

While Gupta and Bansal scored 715 each out of 720, 19 candidates scored 700 and 138 obtained 690 marks. A total of 1,492 candidates scored 650 or above, while 10,160 candidates scored 600 or more, according to the National Testing Agency (NTA).

More than 58 per cent of the qualifying candidates are women.

The crucial exam conducted on May 9 was cancelled by the NTA on May 12 amid allegations of paper leak. The CBI is investigating the matter.

The exam was re-conducted on June 21.

Last year, the results were announced on June 25. Allaying concerns about whether the re-exam will delay the admission schedule, the NTA clarified that the results have been declared on time so that the medical admission and counselling calendar for the candidates remains on track.

“The results were declared within time through re-engineering of the process, with stages designed to run in parallel rather than in sequence, and with the de-linking of the OMR sheet challenge from answer key release. Each stage was completed in full and made available for candidate view,” the NTA said.

The National Eligibility cum Entrance Test-Undergraduate, or NEET-UG, is the largest undergraduate entrance exam in the country, with nearly 25 lakh candidates appearing for the crucial test.

The NTA conducts NEET every year for admission into medical colleges. A total of 1,08,000 seats are available for the MBBS course. Of these, approximately 56,000 are in government hospitals and about 52,000 are in private colleges.

Undergraduate courses in dentistry, Ayurveda, Unani and Siddha also utilise NEET results for admissions.

Following the controversy over paper leak and alleged irregularities in the exam process, the Centre announced that the exam will now be conducted as a computer-based test (CBT), rather than in the pen and paper mode.

Detailed deliberations have been going on for several years between the education and health ministries on whether to conduct NEET-UG in pen and paper or online mode.