Sikar: Rajasthan’s second-largest coaching hub, after Kota, Sikar’s extraordinary NEET-UG results from two years ago have triggered suspicion online after the NEET 2026 leak controversy. People are posting screenshots of the 2024 results where Sikar’s success rate was the highest in the country. But coaching institutes have dismissed these allegations and called it an attempt to malign the town’s image. In Sikar, people are citing the teaching “culture, quality of students and their sincerity” for the high selection rates.
“Sikar’s results are not something that appeared overnight. Over the last eight to ten years, Sikar has emerged as a major coaching hub, much like Kota, and naturally there is rivalry and an attempt by some people to create a narrative against the city. But if you look at the data placed by NTA itself before the Supreme Court in 2024, it showed that Sikar had the highest-performing centres in the country,” said Pradeep Badhodiya, a teacher and the founder of Gurukripa Career Institute.
In 2024, the National Test Agency submitted its report in the Supreme court after irregularities emerged in that year’s exam. The report suggested that Sikar had the highest selection in NEET compared to other centers in the country.
Now with the NEET-UG 2026 paper leak and exam cancellation, the coaching hub is again at the centre of a controversy. Screenshots are doing rounds on social media, claiming that more than 4,297 students from Sikar scored above 600 marks in NEET-UG 2024.
However, Sikar has consistently done well in NEET over the past few years.
Data, released after the Supreme Court directed the NTA to publish centre-wise results, showed that Sikar’s overall success rate was 19.22 per cent in 2024, compared to 19.19 percent in 2023. In 2025 too, the NEET-UG All India Rank 1 candidate was from Sikar.
In 2024, 23.5 lakh candidates had appeared for 1.08 lakh medical seats, bringing the national average success rate to 4.5 per cent.
Reports based on the same data also showed that 2,037 students from Sikar scored above 650 marks, while nearly 149 candidates scored above 700.
Patna’s success rate for NEET-UG 2024 stood at 5.53 per cent.
Also read: NEET aspirants returning to Sikar—find a room, process the paper leak and start all over again
A growing coaching hub
Over the years, the number of students and the number of coaching institutes have gone up exponentially in Sikar. Teachers claim that the results have been improving over the years in Sikar and not just in the years when the paper was leaked or irregularities emerged. The police have also not claimed any involvement of Sikar coaching institutes in the NEET 2026 paper leak so far.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the Supreme Court in 2024 that data showed Sikar’s strong NEET performance was not a sudden spike but part of a consistent trend over previous years.
“At the same time, NTA also submitted records showing that Sikar’s results were consistently strong in 2023, 2022 and 2021 as well. That means Sikar’s performance was not limited to one controversial year, it had already built a strong academic ecosystem over time,” said Badhodiya.
In 2024 NEET-UG, Sikar was followed by Tanuku in Andhra Pradesh, while Namakkal in Tamil Nadu recorded a success rate of 16.04 per cent. Other high-performing centres included Howrah at 12.31 percent, Kota at 12 per cent, along with Bikaner and Kottayam, which also featured among the top-performing NEET centres nationally.
The teachers claim that coaching hubs like Sikar, Kota, Namakkal, Rajkot, and Kottayam naturally produce unusually high scores because students there take frequent mock tests and remain in intensive preparation ecosystems.
“The working culture here is different from many other cities. Most students come from rural areas and ordinary families. These students sincerely follow the system and work very hard. Over the years, a culture of hard work and personal student care has developed in Sikar. The success rate of Sikar did not rise suddenly; it has grown consistently over time,” said MM Baldodiya, a teacher and centre head at Physics Wallah in Sikar.
He said that Sikar has been giving results over the past few years, which helped it emerge as a popular coaching hub.
“As far as paper leaks are concerned, the AIPMT paper leak happened in 2015 and NEET-related controversies surfaced again in 2016. Then, the next major controversy came in 2024. But between 2015-16 and 2024-25, Sikar’s growth and performance remained strong,” he added.
From political leaders to intellectuals and content creators, everyone is questioning Sikar’s high NEET success rate, but agencies and coaching institutes are refuting the claims, maintaining that the town has always done better.
“We interrogated the teacher who filed the complaints for hours and for the period we investigated in this matter we didn’t find any relation of any Sikar coaching institute with this paper leak,” said a senior police officer involved in the 2026 NEET paper leak investigation.
Coaching operators in Sikar argue that the city’s exceptional results and long-standing academic ecosystem are now being wrongly interpreted as evidence of wrongdoing.
“In NEET 2025, there was no controversy anywhere in the country, and AIR-1 also came from the Sikar centre. Now, in 2026, if the first exposure related to a NEET paper leak has again emerged from Sikar itself, then it cannot simply be said that Sikar promotes such activities. The city’s identity has been built on performance, discipline and a competitive academic culture,” said Badhodiya.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)