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The NEET-UG 2026 re-examination, held after the National Testing Agency cancelled the original May 3 test over an alleged paper leak, has produced two contrasting records — the second-lowest attendance since NTA began conducting the exam in 2019, and the highest qualifying cut-off ever recorded.

NTA cancelled the May 3 exam on May 12, days after receiving an email alleging that a circulated “guess paper” substantially overlapped with the actual question paper. It announced the re-examination on May 15 for June 21. The CBI, probing the leak, has arrested 13 people so far. NTA officials did not respond to HT’s requests for comment on the fall in attendance and rise in cut-off marks.

The drop hit women harder than men. Comparing with 2025 data, 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 drop of 10.65 points.

Dr Lakshya Mittal, chairperson of the United Doctors Front, called the drop of over 200,000 candidates “deeply concerning,” saying it highlighted “the financial and mental burden repeated examinations place on students.”

Even as attendance fell, the qualifying cut-off climbed sharply. The UR/EWS minimum qualifying score rose to 213 marks — up 69 from 144 last year, and the highest since NTA took over NEET in 2019, when the cut-off stood at 134. It had fluctuated between 117 (2022) and 162 (2024) in the years since.

Yet the proportion of candidates qualifying barely moved. Of the 1.999 million who appeared this year, 1.121 million qualified — a rate of 56.06%, nearly identical to 55.97% in 2025 and consistent with a trend that has held near 56% every year since 2019.

Experts said this is because NEET eligibility is determined by percentile rather than fixed marks — candidates crossing the prescribed percentile qualify regardless of the absolute score required that year. The record cut-off, in other words, reflects a stronger overall score distribution rather than more students qualifying.

Agarwal attributed the higher cut-off to several factors compounding at once: nearly a month of extra preparation time, an easier Biology section that lifted scores at the lower end, tougher physics and chemistry that capped an excessive spike at the top, and the absence of over 200,000 candidates — many of them possibly less prepared — which reduced competition.

The number of qualifiers has broadly tracked attendance over the years, rising from 797,042 in 2019 to a peak of 1.316 million in 2024, before declining to 1.237 million in 2025 and 1.121 million this year — the lowest since 2022, though still higher than every year from 2019 to 2022. The fall from last year is attributable to reduced attendance rather than a lower success rate.

Uttar Pradesh produced the largest pool of qualifiers, at more than 170,000, while Lakshadweep had 43. The top 17 candidates — all scoring above 705 — came from Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Telangana.