In a year when the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the JEE-Main examination by five months, eight students from Telangana were among the 24 students who topped the engineering entrance examination.

Five students from Delhi and four from Rajasthan also achieved the perfect 100 percentile score.

Only one girl student, Chukka Tanuja from Telengana, was among the toppers. Anant Vohra scored 99.84 percentile to become the topper among students with disabilities.

At the time of going to print, the National Testing Agency, which conducts the examination, had not yet released the full all-India rank list or the cut-off score for eligibility to attempt the JEE Advanced to be held on September 27. Students can check their scores and the final answer keys at jeemain.nta.nic.in.

The JEE Main is used as an entrance examination for admission to the undergraduate engineering courses at the National Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes for Information Technology and institutions run by some State governments. The top 2.5 lakh students will be eligible to appear for the JEE Advanced, which is the admission test for the elite Indian Institutes of Technology.

The examination is held twice a year, and students are allowed to attempt the examination both times and then select their best score. More than 11 lakh students wrote the examination in January, and 8.58 lakh registered to write it in April. Due to the pandemic, the second examination was postponed till September 1-6. It is not yet known how many students attempted the examination both times.

The examination has been marred by multiple postponements due to the COVID-19 pandemic this year, with a section of students and parents demanding further postponement due to fear of infection and difficulties in transportation caused by local lockdowns. Despite widespread social media protests, letters from several State governments and multiple court cases to postpone the examinations, the second session of JEE Main was held last week. Over a quarter of registered students failed to appear. Out of the total 8.58 lakh registered candidates, only 74% or 6.35 lakh students actually wrote their examinations, according to a tweet by Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank earlier this week.

The NTA said arrangements had been made to disinfect seating areas between shifts of students, provide fresh masks and sanitiser, check body temperatures with thermal guns and isolate students with fever in separate rooms, and state governments were asked to facilitate travel arrangements for candidates.

Topper list

The list of toppers are as follows:

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