2 friends from Indore come second, third
They are the best of friends and fierce competitors as well. Indore’s Archit Gupta and Manish Mulchandani secured the All India Rank 2 and 3 in NEET 2017, results for which were announced on Friday.
Gupta and Mulchandani left their homes to stay in a hostel so that they could concentrate on their studies. They attended the same coaching institute in Madhya Pradesh. “I am from Indore but decided to stay in the hostel to concentrate on my studies. I didn’t follow any schedule to study. I used to pick any book and start studying. I kept my focus on my weak points and converted it into my strength,” Gupta said. The 17-year-old will represent India at the Bio Olympiad in London on July 23.
“Archit and I always compete with each other, but it is a healthy competition . I am happy that my hard work paid off,” Mulchandani said.
Both of them also found a place in the top 10 of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences entrance exam for an MBBS course. Mulchandani said it was not necessary that only toppers from school can top the competitive exam.
“I concentrated on studies to clear NEET. I was just expecting a good medical college but I am happy to secure a rank in the merit,” he added.
Over 11,38,889 candidates registered for the exam, of which 10,90,085 appeared and 6,11,539 qualified. Of the successful candidates, 2,66,221 were boys and 3,45,313 girls. Five of the eight from the transgender category cleared the exam.
The NEET exam was dogged by question paper leak. Bihar and Rajasthan police had arrested nine people from across Patna, Jaipur and New Delhi on May 7 for trying to leak the question papers. Five of the arrests were from Patna.
The NEET 2017 results declared on Friday came with a mixed bag for those who had secured top ranks in the AIIMS entrance exam declared last week. Surat girl Nishita Purohit, who was AIIMS 2017 topper, secured All India Rank (AIR) 11. Indore boy Archit Gupta, who followed Nishita at second position in AIIMS 2017, aced her in the NEET securing AIR 2.
Both will seek admission at AIIMS, New Delhi.
For Archit, it is the culmination of two years of no basketball, no video games, no social media, and studies spanning 14 to 15 hours every day. The 17-year-old had scored a perfect 100% in the AIIMS and 96.5% in the NEET. He aspires to become a neurosurgeon. Coached at the Indore centre of the Kota-based Allen Career Institute, Archit said that he had expected a good rank, but not the AIR 2. He had a suggestion for the other medical aspirants. “Don’t waste time, focus on studies in school and at coaching institutes, and follow the NCERT books,” he says.
Nishita too expressed happiness at her rank. “After the NEET answer key was released it was announced that bonus marks will be given for a few questions because of errors in the questions. The bonus marks disturbed my NEET rank,” she said.
She claimed that the AIIMS entrance examination paper was tougher than the NEET.
In Kota for last two years and studying at the Allen Career Institute, she too had scored a 100 percentile in AIIMS 2017. She said that she used to attend around six hours of daily coaching classes and later studied for six more hours.
Gandhinagar, the capital of PM Narendra Modi’s home state Gujarat, Karnataka’s capital Bengaluru, Allahabad, Aligarh and Jhansi in Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar’s capital Patna are among the 30 urban centres that have been chosen to be developed as smart cities.
With this, the total number of cities selected under the NDA government’s flagship urban upgrade programme has gone up to 90. Modi had launched the ambitious plan to develop 100 smart cities in June 2015. The remaining 10 cities are likely to be selected early next year.
Meant to change the way urban India lives, smart cities will enjoy uninterrupted power and water supplies, internet connectivity, e-governance along with quality infrastructure.
Announcing the names of the 30 cities, Union urban development minister M Venkaiah Naidu said that smart city projects are not mere real estate projects. “Smart city development is based on the shared vision of citizens and respective city governments and not imposed by the central government,” he said.
Naidu added that on account of limitations of financial resources and inadequacies of planning and execution abilities, mission cities are choosing relatively small areas to start with for addressing infrastructure deficit. Fourteen of the 30 cities that were chosen are from BJP-ruled states. While three cities each are from Gujarat and UP, two each are from Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, and one each from Maharashtra, Haryana, Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh.
Bengaluru, Shimla, Aizawl and Puducherry that also made the cut are from Congress-ruled states. Two cities from Bihar — capital Patna and Muzaffarpur — were also selected. Amravati and Karimnagar — two cities from the newly-formed states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana — also made it to the list. Many cities in the third list fare poorly on socio-economic indicators The cities, which will get ₹100 crore each till 2019, were chosen through an inter-city competition.