BHUBANESWAR: EBalangir boy Ashutosh Panda topped National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) from Odisha with an all-India rank of 73. Ashutosh secured 682 marks out of 720. Ashutosh, who thanked his parents, teachers and well wishers for his success, said, “I wish to become doctor and want to work for the downtrodden in the KBK region.”
The student from Yuvodaya College in Balangir said he studied for 18 hours a day and is extremely happy with the result which was more than he had expected. Ashutosh’s father Rajkishore Panda works as a regional sales manager of a pharmaceutical company in Balangir. His mother Susama Padhi is an ICDS supervisor.
Odisha girl Sangeeta Agrawal has secured all-India 91st rank in the exam. Sangeeta, who scored 680 marks out of 720, has been placed at 17th rank among top 20 female scorers in the examination. Of the 35,093 candidates who had registered from Odisha, 32,378 appeared in NEET 2019 conducted on May 5 and May 20 across the country. A total of 19,244 students from the State have qualified.
The overall success rate of Odisha in NEET this year is 59.44 per cent -- 1 per cent less compared to 60.68 per cent in 2018.Odisha’s rank among all States and Union territories in the entrance test is 13th. At 74.92 per cent, Delhi tops the list. Nagaland is at the bottom with 35.52 per cent. Odisha’s pass percentage is 3 per cent more than the national average of 56.27 per cent. However, the State’s rank is below Andhra Pradesh (70.72 per cent) and Jharkhand (60.81 per cent). At the national level, Nalin Khandelwal from Rajasthan has topped the entrance test.