NEET Toppers Split on Jantar Mantar Protests

As students led by Cockroach Janta Party continue protesting at Jantar Mantar over the NEET-UG paper leak, India's two highest scorers in the re-conducted exam have offered starkly different takes on the movement. While one embracing it as democratic necessity, the other declining to engage with it at all.

AIR 1 Aryan Gupta: "Protest and Dissent Are Essential"

Speaking to news agency ANI, All India Rank 1 holder Aryan Gupta - who scored 715/720 - was candid about how personally shattering the exam's cancellation felt at first. "I was disappointed at first because I was really devastated. I cried a lot that the paper was cancelled," he said. But he found perspective in numbers: roughly 22 lakh aspirants were in the same position, and he treated the re-test as a second chance, resuming preparation "from the very next day."

When asked directly about students protesting the paper leak, Gupta didn't dodge the question. He called the situation unfair but was unambiguous in defending the right to protest itself: "It's unfair, but protest and dissent are essential parts of a democracy. We can only hope that the system becomes better. There are flaws in every system, and I hope there will be reforms so that such paper leaks or incidents never happen again."

Gupta credited his parents - both doctors - his elder brother (a medical student at MAMC Delhi), and his teachers as his emotional anchors through the ordeal, and urged future aspirants to stay consistent and disciplined.

AIR 2 Panshul Bansal: Studied Instead, Won't Comment on Protests

AIR 2 holder Panshul Bansal, who also scored 715 marks with a 99.9999 percentile, took a very different path through the same crisis - and struck a very different tone on the protests when asked, in an interview with a national TV channel.

Rather than joining the demonstrations, Bansal told the channel he consciously chose to stay home and prepare: "I thought, why should I go to the protest? Instead, I could be studying at home and improving my skills and improving my score."

Bansal, a student at KR Mangalam World School in Greater Kailash, described a similar emotional arc to Gupta's - "despair and sadness" giving way within hours to renewed motivation - but framed his response as a deliberate choice to tune out the noise around him: "I thought, why should I bring negativity into the picture? I should forget everything and focus on my main goal." He had scored around 706 in the original exam before improving to 715 in the retest, without changing his study routine.