56% clear NEET-UG exam, 4 of top 10 from Tamil Nadu
56.2% of candidates qualified for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET)-UG for undergraduate medical courses in India, with four of the top 10 candidates from Tamil Nadu. The highest registration of 2,087,462 candidates was recorded this year, and 1,145,976 candidates qualified, with the pass percentage roughly the same as last year. The results come after the Tamil Nadu government passed a bill to abolish NEET and reinstate the previous method of using Class 12 board exam scores for admissions in state medical colleges, which is currently pending with the President.
The National Testing Agency on Tuesday announced that 56.2% candidates qualified the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET)-UG for admission to undergraduate courses in medical colleges across the country, with four out of the 10 top-scoring candidates from Tamil Nadu, even as the number of total qualifying students went up from 993,069 last year to 1,145,976 this year.
While Prabanjan J from Tamil Nadu and Bora Varun Chakravarthi from Andhra Pradesh tied for the top spot with the perfect score of 720 marks, or 99.99 percentile, Kaustav Bauri (Tamil Nadu), Pranjal Aggrawal (Punjab), and Dhruv Advani (Uttar Pradesh) stood third, fourth and fifth respectively.
According to NTA, the nodal agency for conducting the exam, NEET-UG recorded the highest registration of 2,087,462 candidates this year. Of them, 2,038,596 or 97.6% appeared, and 1,145,976 or 56.3% candidates qualified the exam. The pass percentage is roughly the same as last year.
Last year, of the 1,764,571 students who appeared, 993,069 or 56.2% qualified the exam. However, in absolute figures, the number of qualifying students increased by 152,907 – an increase of 15.4% over last year.
Among those who qualified this year, 490,374 are male, 655,599 are female and three transgender candidates, NTA said.
Apart from Prabanjan, three other candidates from Tamil Nadu — Kaustav Bauri, all-India rank 3, Surya Siddharth N, rank 6, and Varun S, rank 9— featured among the toppers.
What makes this development significant is that the results come months after the Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (DKM)-led Tamil Nadu government in February 2022 passed a bill in the state assembly to abolish NEET and reinstate the previous method of using Class 12 board exam scores for admissions in state medical colleges.
On February 18 this year, Tamil Nadu, in a suit filed against the Centre, also challenged before the Supreme Court the constitutional validity of holding a single window entrance to medical colleges across the country through NEET on the ground that it violates the principle of federalism.
The state has maintained that NEET violates the students’ right to equality under Article 14 of the Constitution on the grounds that it is modelled on the CBSE/NCERT syllabus, which adversely affects students from Tamil Nadu, particularly from rural areas studying under the Tamil Nadu State Board of Education.
While the state bill is pending with the President, state BJP chief K Annamalai on Tuesday hit out chief minister MK Stalin’s government.
“Let’s hope today’s results will teach a proper lesson to the DMK who politicised NEET which created equal opportunity for all in medical studies,” Annamalai said.
While there was no response from the DMK, the state government earlier in the day had strongly opposed the National Exit Test (NExT), with chief minister M K Stalin saying it was an additional burden on medical students.
The examination was conducted in 13 languages including Assamese, Bengali, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu.
While 50candidates scored the 99.99 percentile, NTA awarded ranks using its “tie-breaker” formula under which if more than one candidate gets the perfect score, the marks in biology are considered first to decide their rank, followed by chemistry and then physics.
“The result of NEET-UG, 2023, has been declared on the basis of the qualifying criteria prescribed by the National Medical Commission and Dental Council of India and also based on the information submitted by the candidates in their online application forms,” NTA said.
The exam witnessed an increase in qualifying marks this year. For instance, the qualifying marks range for unreserved category last year was 715-117 marks and has increased to 720-137 this year. Similarly, for OBC SC, and ST categories, it has increased from e 116-93 to 136-107 this year.
Of the 1,145,976 qualified candidates, 312,405 were from unreserved category, 525,194 from OBC category, 153,674 from SC, 56,381 from ST, and 98,322 from EWS category.
Besides, 3,508 candidates from persons with disabilities category also qualified the exam.
In terms of state-wise performance, Uttar Pradesh reported the highest number of qualified candidates (139,961), followed by Maharashtra (131,008), Rajasthan (100,316), and Tamil Nadu (78,693). To be sure, these numbers are usually down to number of candidates from the state and feature those with higher population.
The exam was conducted on May 7 across 4,097 centres across 499 cities throughout the country, and 14 cities outside India.
“The examination was also conducted outside India in Abu Dhabi, Bangkok, Colombo, Doha, Kathmandu, Kuala Lumpur, Lagos, Manama, Muscat, Riyadh, Sharjah, Singapore along with Dubai and Kuwait City.” the NTA said in a statement.
Separately, seven candidates were identified for using unfair practices in the examination and have been dealt with according to NTA norms, the agency said.
“The qualified candidates may please note that they have to further complete the formalities with the respective counselling Authorities viz DGHS, Medical Education Directorates of States, etc. for admission to MBBS/BDS Courses. The details and schedule of counseling would be available on the websites of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Medical Education Directorates of States as applicable,” NTA said.
