JAMMU, JULY 17: Two candidates from Jammu and Kashmir have secured places in the National Testing Agency’s state-wise toppers list for NEET-UG 2026, marking a notable achievement for the Union Territory in one of the country’s most competitive entrance examinations.
Hadiya Nisar emerged as the highest-ranked candidate from Jammu and Kashmir, securing All India Rank 99 with a percentile score of 99.9931. Zaidan Wani followed closely with All India Rank 124 and the same percentile score.
The two candidates are the only aspirants from Jammu and Kashmir to feature in the official state-wise toppers list released by the NTA along with the declaration of results.
The National Testing Agency announced the NEET-UG 2026 results on Thursday, with around 11.21 lakh candidates qualifying for admission to undergraduate medical, dental, AYUSH and allied health science courses across the country.
Nearly 20 lakh candidates appeared in the examination, which was conducted on June 21 at 5,440 examination centres spread across 551 cities in India and 14 cities outside the country.
The declaration of results is expected to allow the subsequent counselling and admission process for medical and allied courses to proceed according to schedule.
Candidates can access their individual scorecards through the official NEET portal. Along with the results, the NTA has also released the all-India toppers list, state-wise toppers, category-wise performance data, qualifying cut-offs and language-wise participation details.
According to the data released by the testing agency, 138 candidates scored above 690 marks out of a total of 720, while 19 candidates crossed the 700-mark threshold.
Aryan Gupta of Punjab and Panshul Bansal of Haryana jointly emerged as the national toppers after securing 715 marks each.
The results also reflected a strong performance by women candidates. More than 58 per cent of the successful candidates were women, who also recorded a higher overall qualification rate than male candidates.
Among the category-wise qualifiers, the largest number, around 5.12 lakh, belonged to the Other Backward Classes-Non-Creamy Layer category.
This was followed by around 2.91 lakh candidates from the General category, 1.59 lakh from the Scheduled Caste category, 95,026 from the General-Economically Weaker Sections category and 63,716 from the Scheduled Tribe category.
The performance of Hadiya Nisar and Zaidan Wani has brought attention to the growing participation of students from Jammu and Kashmir in national-level competitive examinations.
Their inclusion among the state toppers is likely to encourage medical aspirants across the Union Territory, where thousands of students prepare every year for highly competitive professional entrance examinations.