New Delhi, April 20 (IANS) Four male students shared the All India Rank 1 and 26 candidates scored 100 percentile in the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Main 2026 national-level engineering entrance exam as the National Testing Agency (NTA) declared the result on Monday.

Kabeer Chhillar, Pasala Mohith, Chandra Sekhar and Aditya Gupta were the four AIR 1 students who scored a perfect 300-on-300 to corner AIR 1, NTA sources said, adding that Mallavarapu Aasna from Telangana was the best performing girl student. There are no girls among the 26 students with 100 percentile.

A total of 16,04,854 unique candidates registered for the exam across both sessions, with 15,38,474 unique candidates actually appearing, NTA sources said.

The exam was conducted in two sessions – one in January and the second in April.

Number of candidates in session 1 in January saw 13,55,293 registrations and 13,04,653 attendees, while the number of candidates in session 2 in April recorded 11,10,904 registrations and 10,34,330 attendees.

The JEE Main 2026 is the screening exam that selects candidates who will be eligible to appear for JEE Advanced, which will select candidates for admission to the IITs.

Candidates ranked within the top 2.5 lakh will be eligible to appear for JEE Advanced 2026. For General Category candidates, a minimum 93.41 percentile will be needed to appear in the JEE Advanced exam scheduled on May 17, sources said.

Earlier in the day, the National Testing Agency (NTA) released the final answer key for Session 2 of the JEE Main 2026.

The final answer key is prepared based on the challenges raised against the provisional answer key after thorough evaluation by the subject experts. Candidates must note that the NTA’s decision on the objections raised is final, and there will be no re-evaluation of the final answer keys, said a report on the NDTV website.

The JEE Main 2026 result is compiled based on the final answer key declared on the NTA website.

After the display of the final answer key 2026, the exam conducting body declared the JEE Main Session 2 result on the official website, jeemain.nta.nic.in.

Indian Institutes of Technology are prestigious institutions offering engineering and technological education. The Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) is a national-level engineering entrance exam conducted in two stages – JEE Main and JEE Advanced.

JEE Main is a screening exam that selects candidates who will be eligible to appear for JEE Advanced, which selects candidates for admission to the IITs. There are 23 IITs in India, according to a 2025 statement of the Ministry of Education.

–IANS

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