For Aryan Gupta and Panchul Bansal — who together topped the NEET-UG 2026 re-exam with a score of 715 out of 720 — the path to India’s top rank was through a canceled exam, a second round of preparation that neither of them had planned, and the special exhaustion of studying the same grueling prep subject twice in one year.
Gupta, from Ludhiana, had already sat NEET once. On the original test on May 3, which was later canceled after the paper leaked, he received a score of 696, according to his tally of answer keys. “After studying continuously for two years, when I learned that the exam was cancelled, it became difficult to open the books again,” he said. “But I looked to my colleagues for motivation and treated it as a second chance to do better.”
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“I couldn’t stop smiling”
He did not expect the result that followed. “I never thought I would become first at the national level. But after I left the exam hall, I couldn’t stop smiling because I knew I had tried to do the paper well. My father was waiting outside, and I told him that the exam went really well.”
Gupta comes from a family of more than a dozen doctors, which made medicine, he said, a natural choice — but the path to it this year has been unusually stressful. He said that the physics and chemistry sections were more difficult than expected this time, adding: “I am proud that I coped with both subjects well despite the level of difficulty.”
“I felt bad when the paper leaked…”
Bansal, a student of KR Mangalam Global School in Delhi’s Greater Kailash district who secured AIR 2 with 99.9999 per cent, described the cancellation as frustrating at the moment. “I felt bad when the paper leak happened because I had to study everything again. But then I thought positive and decided to prepare for another month with full focus. It helped me achieve this result,” he told PTI.
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He found the re-done paper more demanding in a different way than the original. “The standard of both papers was about the same. However, the second paper had a longer physics section with paragraph-based questions, which made it take longer,” he said, noting that the original test was relatively easier because it was shorter.
Bansal was direct in calling for consequences. He added to the news agency, “Whenever a paper leak occurs, there must be a strict mechanism to ensure that appropriate action is taken against those responsible.”
Reflecting on the year in general, he added a note to students under similar pressures: “This exam is not bigger than your life. There are many career opportunities available today. If one path does not work, there are many others. Students should not lose hope because of one exam.”
