NEET tally out: 13 boys, 4 girls share top rank

Four girls and 13 boys share top rank in NEET-UG, ending controversy over 67 initial top ranks due to grace marks. Number of qualifiers decreased.

Four girls and 13 boys shared the top rank in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test for undergraduate courses (NEET-UG), according to fresh results released Friday, ending a tumultuous seven weeks for hundreds of thousands of aspiring medical students who can now begin their journey towards becoming this year’s fresher batch.

NTA released fresh NEET results on Friday, ending a tumultuous seven weeks for hundreds of thousands of aspiring medical students who can now begin their journey towards becoming this year’s fresher batch. (Sanchit Khanna/HT Photo)

The number of top-ranked students —17 in total — sparked controversy when the National Testing Agency (NTA) first announced the NEET-UG results on June 4. Initially, 67 students shared the first rank, a figure significantly higher than in previous years, with 50 of them benefitting from grace marks given for different reasons.

This anomaly raised suspicions and angered students. In 2023, two students shared the top rank, while in 2022 and 2021, the numbers wereone and three respectively.

As protests mounted and evidence of malpractice emerged, the government ordered a federal investigation, replaced the NTA chief and appointed a special committee to review the agency’s processes.

The situation escalated when the Supreme Court accepted several petitions against the test. The court focused on whether the process’s integrity remained intact, rejecting calls for a complete retest on July 23, when it ruled that the paper leaks were not widespread, allowing the final scores to be announced.

However, the court criticised the evaluation mechanism, which had awarded extra marks for a disputed physics question and for students who claimed insufficient time due to centre-related issues.

This led to altered results for over 420,000 test-takers, as the grace marks were rescinded.

The number of top-ranked students dropped from 67 to 61 on June 30 when time-related grace marks were removed. It further decreased to 17 when the final results were announced Friday with the physics grace marks also taken away.

According to a statement issued by NTA on Friday, the number of qualified students has now decreased to 1,315,853 from 1,316,268 earlier. To be sure, the total number of medical seats in India is 108,000.

Uttar Pradesh reported the highest number of qualified candidates (165,015) followed by Maharashtra (142,829), Rajasthan (121,166), Tamil Nadu (89,198), Karnataka (88,887) and Kerala (86,713).

How toppers and qualifiers changed

This revision affected the demographic and geographic spread of top performers. The top scorers now come from 10 states, down from 18 initially. Eight states, including Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat, lost their top-ranked students.

Of the 50 students who lost their top rank, 40 were male and 10 female. The current male-female ratio of top scorers is 13 to 4, compared to the previous 53 to 14. This has slightly increased the proportion of female top scorers from 20.9% to 23.5%.

The revised list shows nine toppers from the general category (previously 44), five from the other backward classes (previously 16), two from economically weaker sections (previously five), and one from Scheduled Castes (previously two).

Interestingly, whilst the overall number of qualifying students decreased, some categories saw increases. Male qualifiers decreased by 470, and female qualifiers increased by 55.

In regions, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Rajasthan saw the largest decreases in qualifiers, while Maharashtra, West Bengal, and Gujarat saw increases.

The qualifying marks, too, decreased across all categories. For instance, the qualifying marks range for unreserved category was 720-164, according to the results announced on June 4, but fell to 720-162. Similarly, for OBC SC, and ST categories, it decreased from 163-129 to 161-127.

A senior NTA official confirmed that the high number of toppers was due to the grace marks anomaly. “The number of toppers increased to 67 because 44 students were given grace marks due to the issue related to a physics question, and six students were given grace marks due to the loss of time during the exam,” said the official.

In state-wise performance, four toppers were from Rajasthan (a hub for college entrance coaching institutions), three from Maharashtra, two each from Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, and one each from Bihar, Chandigarh, Punjab, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

This is the third set of results for this year’s medical entrance exam.

After the first one on June 4, the NTA then administered a retest to 1,563 students who were given grace marks on account of losing time. Their results were released on July 1.

Finally on Friday, the final scorecard was released with changes in the all-India rankings and scores of all students.

The next process will now be what is known as seat counselling, which will be conducted by the ministry of health and family welfare, and medical education directorates of states as applicable.