The National Eligibility Test (Undergraduate) or NEET-UG 2026 re-examination, which was conducted after the National Testing Agency (NTA) canceled the original exam on May 3 due to an alleged paper leak, produced two contrasting records: the second-lowest attendance since NTA started conducting the country’s largest medical entrance exam in 2019, and the highest qualifying cut-off ever recorded.
Data released by the NTA on Thursday night, along with the results, shows that only 1.999 million of the 2.280 million registered candidates appeared for the re-examination on June 21, translating to an attendance rate of 87.72%. This was 9 percentage points lower than the 96.72% attendance recorded for the original test on May 3, with 205,140 fewer candidates showing up for the retest. At the same time, the minimum qualifying score for the General/Economically Weaker Section (EWS) category rose to a record high of 213, the highest since the NTA started conducting the exam in 2019, although the proportion of eligible candidates remained almost unchanged.
The attendance rate for the June 21 re-examination was the lowest in any non-pandemic NEET conducted by the NTA, and the second lowest overall, after 2020, when attendance fell to 85.57% amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
Attendance at NEET-UG was 92.85% in 2019, the first year NTA conducted the exam, before falling to 85.57% in 2020 due to the pandemic. It recovered to 95.63% in 2021 and 94.24% in 2022, rose to 97.66% in 2023 and remained above 97% in 2025 (97.07%).
Of the 2.280 million candidates registered for NEET-UG 2026, 2.205 million appeared for the May 3 exam. After the cancellation, only 1.999 million candidates took the re-test on June 21.
The NTA canceled the May 3 exam on May 12, days after receiving an email claiming that the circulating “guess paper” significantly overlapped with the question paper. It announced the re-examination on May 15, and scheduled it to be conducted on June 21. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is probing the alleged paper leak, has arrested 13 people so far.
Although the NTA has not published attendance data by gender for the original May 3 exam, a comparison with 2025 shows that male attendance fell from 97.04% to 89.54%, a decline of 7.5 percentage points, while female attendance fell more sharply from 97.09% to 86.44%, a decline of 10.65 percentage points.
NTA officials did not respond to HT’s requests for comment on the drop in attendance and increase in cut-off marks.
The decline reflects the burden imposed by retesting, said Keshav Agarwal, an educationist and vice-president of the Delhi-based Coaching Federation of India (CFI), which has nearly 1,000 coaching institutes in its membership.
“The decline in attendance was more severe among male aspirants, underscoring the greater challenges faced by girls. While 99,083 boys did not appear for the examination, the number of girls who did not appear was 180,862. This is because many candidates were allocated examination centers 200-400 kilometers away from their home cities, which increased travel and accommodation costs. Momentum disruption, safety concerns, travel difficulties and family pressures were exacerbated by As he put it.
Dr Lakshya Mittal, president of doctors’ body United Doctors Front (UDF), said that dropping more than two lakh candidates in the re-examination is “deeply worrying and highlights the financial and mental burden that repeated exams place on students”.
Despite the sharp decline in attendance, the qualifying criterion moved in the opposite direction.
The cut-off to qualify for UR/EWS has risen to 213, an increase of 69 from 144 last year. It is the highest qualifying cut-off recorded since NTA took over NEET in 2019. The cut-off marks were 134 in 2019, 147 in 2020, 138 in 2021, 117 in 2022, 137 in 2023, 162 in 2024 and 144 in 2025, before It rises sharply to this level. year.
However, a higher qualification score did not translate into a greater proportion of candidates qualifying.
Of the 1.999 million candidates who appeared this year, 1.121 million qualified, a qualification rate of 56.06%. This number roughly matches the 55.97% in 2025 and reflects a trend that has remained remarkably stable since 2019. In 2019, 797,042 out of 1,411 million candidates were eligible, a qualification rate of 56.50%. The rate was 56.44% in 2020, 56.34% in 2021, 56.28% in 2022, 56.21% in 2023, 56.39% in 2024, 55.97% in 2025, and 56.06% in 2026.
The data shows that although the minimum marks required to qualify have fluctuated sharply over the years – from 117 in 2022 to 213 in 2026 – the proportion of candidates declared eligible has remained constant at around 56%.
According to experts, the reason lies in the design of the examination. NEET eligibility is decided on the basis of percentages rather than fixed marks. Candidates who exceed the specified percentage qualify regardless of the absolute score required in a given year. As a result, the higher-record eligibility cut-off reflects a stronger overall distribution of scores among candidates who appeared to re-examine rather than a larger share of eligible students.
Agarwal attributed the high discount rate to several factors. “Students benefited from nearly a month of additional preparation time, while the easier biology section helped boost results at the lower end. More rigorous physics and chemistry prevented an excessive rise at the top. The absence of over two lakh candidates also reduced competition from less prepared aspirants, collectively raising the eligibility threshold,” he said.
The number of qualified candidates has been widely tracking the number that has emerged over the years. The number of eligible people increased from 797,042 in 2019 to 771,500 in 2020, 870,074 in 2021, and 993,069 in 2022, exceeding one million with 1.146 million in 2023, and peaking at 1.316 million in 2024. It decreased to 1.237 million in 2025. It then reaches 1.121 million this year, largely because participation fell sharply after the re-examination.
While 2026 recorded the lowest number of qualifiers since 2022, it was not the lowest since NTA started conducting NEET-UG. There were fewer qualifiers in 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022. Thus, the decline from last year’s 1.237 million qualifiers reflects lower attendance rather than a lower pass rate.
At the state level, Uttar Pradesh again produced the largest pool of successful candidates, with more than 170,000 qualifications, while Lakshadweep bagged 43. The top 17 candidates, all with scores above 705, came from Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Telangana.
