Bihar NEET UG 2026 Toppers: Ayush Bhalotia Tops State At AIR 4, Riya Ranjan Is India’s No. 2 Woman Scorer

Patna: Bihar has turned in one of its strongest NEET UG showings in recent years, placing two candidates inside the national top 10 – a feat only a handful of states managed in the 2026 re-examination. The official NTA merit list puts Ayush Bhalotia at the top of the state with All India Rank 4, while Riya Ranjan, right behind him at AIR 6, has emerged as the second-highest-scoring woman in the entire country.

Why Bihar’s Result Is Genuinely Notable This Year

Most states manage one candidate in the national top 10 in a good year. Bihar placed two – and one of them, Riya Ranjan, tops the charts among female candidates nationwide behind only Maharashtra’s Kudale Shravani Krishna. That combination – two top-10 finishers, one of them the country’s second-best female scorer – put Bihar alongside Punjab, Haryana and Maharashtra as the only states with more than one candidate this deep into the national merit list.

Bihar’s State Toppers: Official NTA Data

Source: NTA’s official “Top 138 candidates scoring 690+” and category-wise topper lists, released alongside the Re-NEET UG 2026 result.

Riya Ranjan: Bihar’s Standout Among Women

While Ayush Bhalotia holds the higher overall rank, it’s Riya Ranjan who carries the bigger national story. NTA’s separate list of the top 20 female candidates in the country places her at number 2 overall – behind only Maharashtra’s Kudale Shravani Krishna – making her comfortably the highest-ranked woman from Bihar and one of the strongest OBC-NCL performers in India this year.

Bihar’s SC Category Performance

Bihar also placed two candidates among the national top 10 SC-category rankers:

• Ravi Kant Diwakar – AIR 55 (national SC rank 3)
• Satyam Raj – AIR 592 (national SC rank 9)

This is a notable spread – while Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan dominate the general and OBC lists, Bihar’s SC-category candidates are among the more consistent presences across NTA’s published rankers this year, alongside Maharashtra.

How Bihar Compares Nationally

• The overall Re-NEET 2026 topper spot was jointly won by Punjab’s Aryan Gupta and Haryana’s Panshul Bansal, both scoring 715/720 (99.9999 percentile)
• Bihar’s Ayush Bhalotia at AIR 4 sits just behind Rajasthan’s Uplakshya Goyal (AIR 3), and ahead of Maharashtra’s Kudale Shravani Krishna (AIR 5)
• Nationally, 19 candidates scored above 700 and 138 scored 690 or above, per NTA’s official statistics
• Score distribution shows a steep drop-off: only 19 candidates nationwide crossed 700, while over 27,000 scored between 551–600

Re-NEET 2026 Score Distribution (National)

Bihar NEET UG 2026 Counselling: What Comes Next

Bihar’s state counselling works differently from several other states, since it’s run by a dedicated competitive-exam board rather than a medical university:

• Conducted by the Bihar Combined Entrance Competitive Examination Board (BCECEB) under its UGMAC section, at bceceboard.bihar.gov.in
• Covers roughly 85% of MBBS/BDS seats under the state quota, with the remaining 15% going to the All India Quota via MCC
• Bihar’s state reservation matrix is notably granular: SC (~16%), ST (~1%), EBC (~18%), BC (~12%), EWS (~10%) and PwD (5% horizontal)
• Registration and the state merit list are expected in the second half of July, with Round 1 seat allotment likely in August

What Bihar Candidates Should Do Next

• Watch bceceboard.bihar.gov.in for the UGMAC registration window and merit list
• Keep domicile and category certificates issued by Bihar’s competent authority ready – these are mandatory for state-quota benefits
• Cross-verify personal percentile and AIR against the official NTA scorecard before choice-filling begins
• Candidates applying for both AIQ and state quota can register for both simultaneously, but can’t hold seats in both at once