When the National Testing Agency (NTA) declared the NEET results on Friday, the medical aspirants across the country had marched towards knowing their marks with the hope to get placed in some of the leading medical institutions in the nation to pursue their higher studies.  However, the national entrance exam had, later on, proved that the Central government hasn't fixed and repaired the damages and discrepancies around it in shaping NEET as a full-fledged national exam, accepted and prepared by all. 

Hours after the results were announced, NEET has got surfaced with a larger mess and chaos and it has pushed the students to a state of perplexion and the shocking development had captured that the NTA, under the Union Ministry of Education, had published the results in a rush by seemingly having a less concern on the students and their studies. 

The NTA had eventually failed to mitigate the discrepancies after there are a lot of mismatches in its list of the number of students passed and how many students have actually appeared for the examination, that held on September 13 across the country and the discrepancies had caused a nature of uncertainty among the students and parents. 

According to reports, 3,536 candidates have appeared for the NEET in the state of Tripura. However, the results published by NTA said that 88,889 students have cleared the exam in the Northeastern state and the number is about 85,000 higher than the actual number of students who appeared in Tripura. Similarly, 12,047 students have appeared for the national exam in Uttarkhand and the results had shown that 37,301 students have cleared in Uttarkhand. 

Likewise, 50,392 students have appeared for the exam in Telangana of which 1,738 students have cleared the exam. However, the NTA has announced that the state had registered 49.15% as pass percentage. About 1.56 students have appeared in Uttar Pradesh of which only 7,323 students had cleared the exam. However, the NTA had recorded the pass percentage as 60.79%. The development of discrepancies had caused a perplexion among the students on the conformity of their real marks.

The reports close to the developments say that NTA has been preparing to fix the discrepancies, after releasing the results and despite knowing that lakhs of students are waiting for the result which would shape their future in pursuing the medical studies. According to the results, 18-year-old Soyeb Aftab from Odisha has become the topper in the country after scoring 720 out of 720. Akanksha Singh was the second rank holder and though she had scored 720, the NTA had applied the tie-breaking formula and named Soyeb as the topper based on the age. 

According to ANI, speaking to the media after securing the first rank in the exam, Soyeb Aftab said, "There is no doctor in my family, so I didn't expect this. I had hoped to make it to the top 100 or top 50 but I never expected to score 720/720. The exam was being postponed, so there was a lot of pressure. But the goal was to stay calm & utilize time". Akanksha Singh is from Delhi and she was the second rank holder while Tummala Snikitha from Telangana scored the third rank followed by Rajasthan's Vineeth Sharma at fourth and Haryana's Amrisha Khaitan at the fifth rank. 

There is no doctor in my family, so I didn't expect this. I had hoped to make it to top 100 or top 50 but I never expected to score 720/720. The exam was being postponed, so there was a lot of pressure. But the goal was to stay calm & utilise time: Soyeb Aftab, #NEET2020 topper pic.twitter.com/9WA6u3NPW3

— ANI (@ANI) October 16, 2020

Among the top 50 candidates overall, eight are from Andhra Pradesh, seven from Telangana, four from Kerala, and one each from Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Two students belong to the Scheduled Caste category while seven candidates belong to the OBC category.  Overall, this year's NEET had recorded a pass percentage of 56.44%. This is lower than the last year as in 2019, the pass percentage was 56.50%. According to the NTA, a total of 1597435 students registered for this year's NEET exam. 

A total of 13,66,945 had appeared for the exam of which 7,15,586 were men, 8,80,843 were women, and six transpersons. Totally, 7,71,500 students were declared pass of which 3,43,556 are male, 4,27,943 are female, and one transperson candidate had also cleared the exam. However, while the rank holders were under the rain of appreciations, the discrepancies in the results had drawn massive attention across the nation and according to the latest reports, the NTA had re-released the results after fixing the discrepancies, which could have been avoided before publishing the results.