New Delhi: Tamil Nadu's Prabanjan J and Andhra Pradesh's Bora Varun Chakravarthi jointly topped the medical entrance exam NEET-UG this year with 99.99 percentile scores, the National Testing Agency (NTA) announced on Tuesday.
A total of 11.45 lakh candidates out of 20.38 lakh have qualified the exam.
Among the states, Uttar Pradesh has highest number of qualifying candidates (1.39 lakh) followed by Maharashtra (1.31 lakh) and Rajasthan (over 1 lakh).
Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra are the two most populous states in the country while Rajasthan also figures in the top ten in terms of population.
The NTA conducted the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (UG) at 4,097 centres located in 499 cities throughout the country including 14 cities outside India on May 7.
"Seven candidates were identified using unfair practices in the examination and have been dealt with as per the norms," a senior NTA official said.
The examination was conducted in 13 languages (Assamese, Bengali, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu).
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 has provided all India rank to the candidates and the admitting authorities will draw merit list based on the ranks for the seats of MBBS and BDS falling under their jurisdiction.
"When candidates apply to their state, they will mention their category as per state category list. State counselling authorities will accordingly make their merit list. The same is the case with the domicile. The NTA has no role in it," the official said.