New Delhi | Punjab's Aryan Gupta and Haryana's Panshul Bansal topped the NEET-UG for medical admissions as 11.21 lakh candidates qualified the entrance exam this year, the National Testing Agency announced on Thursday.

Gupta and Bansal scored 715 each out of 720. Their score was 29 marks higher than the 686 secured by the 2025 topper, when an unusually tough paper ensured that not a single candidate crossed 700.

While 19 candidates scored 700, 138 obtained 690 marks. More than 93 per cent of the 138 candidates scoring above 690 were appearing for NEET-UG for the first time.

A total of 1,492 candidates scored 650 or above, while 10,160 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.

In 2024, 17 candidates initially secured perfect scores of 720 amid a major controversy over grace marks. After the Supreme Court-ordered revision of one disputed question, the number of candidates retaining the top score was reduced.

The number of qualifiers declined from 12.36 lakh in 2025 to 11.21 lakh this year, but the numbers appearing also fell from 22.09 lakh to close to 20 lakh. The overall qualification rate, therefore, remained broadly stable at around 56 per cent, despite the cancellation and re-test.

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.

Uttar Pradesh again produced the largest pool of successful candidates, with more than 1.7 lakh qualifying, while Lakshadweep had 43.

In 2025, Uttar Pradesh led with more than 1.70 lakh qualifiers, followed by Maharashtra at 1.25 lakh and Rajasthan at over 1.19 lakh.

The top 17 candidates, all scoring above 705, came from eight states – Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Telangana.

Seventeen state toppers scored 700 or more, while 26 crossed 690.

The Union territory toppers included Ladakh’s Jigmet Yangchan Lamo with 530, Andaman and Nicobar Islands’ Dhruv Tripathi with 606 and Lakshadweep’s Fahmida Anees with 573.

Each northeastern state was also represented in the state-topper list.

Among social categories, 5.12 lakh OBC-NCL candidates qualified, followed by 2.91 lakh general-category candidates, 1.59 lakh SC candidates, 95,026 from Gen-EWS and 63,716 from ST communities.

The successful pool also included 3,666 persons with benchmark disabilities (PwBD) and 303 PwD candidates.

NEET-UG was conducted in 13 languages.