NEW DELHI: Women formed the majority of NEET-UG candidates and qualifiers again in 2026, but their representation thinned sharply at the very top, with only 30 women among the 138 candidates scoring 690 or more.Women accounted for 13.3 lakh of 22.8 lakh registrations, or 58.5%, and 6.5 lakh of 11.2 lakh candidates who qualified in the re-exam. Their success rate among those appearing was 56.8%, compared with 55.1% for men. Yet women made up only 21.7% of the 690-plus list, underlining a persistent pipeline-to-pinnacle gap.Only two women figured in the top 10 — Kudale Shravani Krishna of Maharashtra at All India Rank (AIR) 5 and Riya Ranjan of Bihar at AIR 6. Both are OBC candidates. Of the 44 candidates listed as state, UT or foreign toppers, 13 were women.Punjab’s Aryan Gupta secured AIR 1, followed by Panshul Bansal of Haryana and Uplakshya Goyal of Rajasthan. Bihar placed two candidates in the top six, with Ayush Bhalotia bagging AIR 4 and Ranjan at AIR 6.Rajasthan had largest representation in the 690-plus group, with 19 candidates, followed by Maharashtra with 18. Together, the two states accounted for 37 of the 138 candidates, or 26.8%. Tamil Nadu had 12, Delhi 11 and Punjab 10, while Haryana, Gujarat and UP contributed nine each to the 690-plus club.Category-wise, the list comprised 102 general candidates, 27 OBC-NCL candidates, five from General-EWS and four from SC. No ST candidate figured among those scoring 690 or above. The pattern shows that representation narrowed considerably at the extreme top end, though the list is a score band and should not be confused with the final admission pool, where reservation, state quotas and counselling rules apply.The state-topper list reveals another divide. While several large states produced candidates within the national top ranks, Ladakh’s topper was placed at AIR 55,742 and Lakshadweep’s at AIR 21,815. Nagaland’s topper stood at AIR 42,124, while Dadra and Nagar Haveli’s was at 16,657. The range illustrates how unevenly top-end performance is distributed across regions, even in an examination with a single national merit list.
