The National Testing Agency (NTA) on Thursday declared the results of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test-Undergraduate (NEET-UG) 2026, with Punjab’s Aryan Gupta and Haryana’s Panshul Bansal emerging as joint toppers.
Both candidates secured 715 marks out of 720 in the country’s largest undergraduate medical entrance examination.
According to the NTA, a total of 11.21 lakh candidates qualified the examination this year. Nineteen candidates scored 700 marks, while 138 candidates secured 690 marks. As many as 1,492 candidates scored 650 or above, and 10,160 candidates obtained 600 marks or more.
More than 58 per cent of the qualified candidates are women, reflecting their strong representation among successful aspirants.
The NEET-UG examination was originally conducted on May 9 but was cancelled by the NTA on May 12 following allegations of a paper leak. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is currently probing the matter.
A re-examination was conducted on June 21.
Addressing concerns that the re-test could delay the medical admission process, the NTA said the results had been declared on schedule to ensure that counselling and admissions proceed without disruption.
“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 agency said.
NEET-UG is the country’s largest undergraduate entrance examination, with nearly 25 lakh candidates appearing for the test every year for admission to medical and allied health science courses.
The examination is conducted for admission to MBBS, BDS, Ayurveda, Unani and Siddha programmes across the country.
India currently has around 1.08 lakh MBBS seats, including approximately 56,000 in government medical colleges and about 52,000 in private institutions.
Following the controversy over the alleged paper leak and examination irregularities, the Centre has decided that future editions of NEET-UG will be conducted in the Computer-Based Test (CBT) mode instead of the traditional pen-and-paper format.
The move comes after years of deliberations between the Ministries of Education and Health on transitioning the country’s biggest medical entrance examination to an online format aimed at enhancing transparency and examination security.
