Odisha's Soyeb Aftab tops NEET exam with 100% score

Odisha's Soyeb Aftab and Delhi's Akansha Singh have brought laurels to their respective states by bagging top positions in medical entrance exam NEET. They topped the list of the more than 7.7 lakh students who qualified for the examination.

New Delhi: The result of the medical entrance exam NEET was announced on Friday night, with Odisha's Soyeb Aftab bagging the top rank attaining a perfect score and Delhi girl Akansha Singh securing the second rank, according to officials of the National Testing Agency.

Singh also scored 720 out of 720 marks in the exam, but lost the top rank to Odisha's Soyeb Aftab due to her younger age which is one of the factors accounted in the National Testing Agency's tie-breaking policy.
According to officials, the tie-breaking policy takes into account factors such as age, subject-wise marks and number of incorrect answers.

"Soyeb Aftab of Odisha and Akansha Singh of Delhi have both scored perfect 720 score in the NEET examination. However, as Aftab is older, he has been ranked at the top in the national ranking," an official said.

"The ranking of the candidate is initially determined based on the scores obtained in Biology and Chemistry. Following these, in cases where the candidates cannot be shortlisted using the scores obtained in the examination, candidates are further shortlisted taking into consideration the number of answers that are incorrect, following which they are then shortlisted depending on their age. The elder one gets the preference," the official explained.

A total of 7,71,500 candidates have qualified the exam for which over 13.66 lakh candidates had appeared. The highest number of qualifying candidates are from Tripura (88,889) followed by Maharashtra (79,974).

The National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) was conducted on September 13 amid strict precautions in view of the COVID-19 pandemic. From this year, the admissions to MBBS course in 13 All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research, Puducherry, will also be made through NEET following the amendment in National Medical Commission Act, 2019, passed by Parliament last year.

The test was offered in 11 languages -- English, Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Odia, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu -- this year. Based on the initial report, more than 77 per cent aspirants took the test in English, around 12 per cent in Hindi and 11 per cent in other languages.

The exam was earlier postponed twice due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the government decided to go ahead with it, despite opposition by a section, to mitigate any further academic loss.

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With inputs from PTI