Of the country’s 50 top-scoring National Eligibility-Cum-Entrance Test centres, 37 are from Rajasthan’s Sikar district, reported The Hindu on Sunday.

These are examination centres with the highest percentage of candidates scoring above 650 marks, out of a possible 720.

The competitive entrance test for admissions to undergraduate medical courses was held on May 5.

About 7% of the candidates who attempted the examination from centres in Sikar scored above 650 marks, as against the national average of 1.29%, the newspaper reported.

Sikar, a hub of coaching classes for students taking the test, had 11 centres where over 100 candidates scored above 600 marks. At one centre, 155 candidates scored above 600 marks.

This became clear on Saturday, when the National Testing Agency, on the orders of the Supreme Court, made public the marks scored by students who had attempted the exam.

Approximately 24 lakh students appeared for the exam this year.

As directed by the court, the results were categorised according to the state where the aspirants had taken the test. The results were also sorted as per the 4,751 centres where the examination was conducted.

When candidates first got their results on June 5, some parents, students and teachers expressed concerns about malpractice as an unusually large number of candidates had scored very high marks.

Sixty-seven students got perfect scores. Six of them were from a single centre in Haryana’s Bahadurgarh district.

Several students moved the Supreme Court asking for an investigation into the exam’s conduct, with some even demanding a retest.

In recent weeks, the Central Bureau of Investigation has arrested at least 21 people across five states for allegedly leaking the exam papers and facilitating other forms of malpractice.

On July 18, the court directed the National Testing Agency to release the state- and centre-wise results to determine if paper leaks had occurred at a large scale.

While Rajasthan led the list of high scorers, Maharashtra came second with 205 students scoring 700 marks or more. Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Gujarat followed on that list.

Vivek Pandey, a doctor and Right-to-Information activist, said it was not surprising that Rajasthan had so many high scorers, given its status as a coaching hub.

“Lots of students go to places like Kota to study, so it isn’t unusual that there are so many high scorers from there,” Pandey said.

Pandey clarified that he is more sceptical about the results from Haryana and Gujarat. Haryana has 146 candidates who scored above 700 marks, while Gujarat has 145.

In Gujarat’s Rajkot, 12 candidates from a single centre scored more than 700 marks while 259 candidates scored above 600 marks.

At the Oasis School in Jharkhand’s Hazaribagh, where a paper leak was reported, 23 candidates scored above 600 marks.

Namakkal in Tamil Nadu also had a large number of high scorers. Three out of the district’s ten centres saw 365 candidates scoring above 600 marks. Namakkal is also a hub for coaching centres.

After the centre-wise results were released by the National Testing Agency on Saturday, some students and teachers alleged on social media that there were discrepancies in the data.

One woman said that her daughter had scored 614 marks when the results were announced last month. However, when the centre-wise results were released, she could not find any candidate who had scored 614 marks at her daughter’s centre.

Another X user pointed out an apparent discrepancy in the data from Hardayal Public School in Haryana’s Bahadurgarh, where six students had got a perfect score of 720 marks, while two students got 718 and 719 marks.

The user pointed out that the National Testing Agency’s centre-wise data did not show any students having scored more than 700 marks at Hardayal Public School, while only two students scored above 650 marks.

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