NEET 2026 Dropped Question: How NTA's Final Answer Key Adjustment Shifted Ranks

Every NEET cycle carries the risk of a flawed question slipping through — and NEET (UG) 2026 was no exception. As NTA finalised the answer key ahead of the 16 July 2026 result, it made a technical correction that every serious aspirant should understand before comparing their expected and actual scores.

What Happened: One Physics Question Dropped

In the Re-NEET UG 2026 provisional answer key released on 25 June 2026, NTA identified one Physics question in Test Booklet Code 50 that could not be fairly evaluated and dropped it from scoring.

Under NTA's standard evaluation policy, when a question is dropped, every candidate who appeared for that test booklet code receives +4 bonus marks automatically — regardless of whether they attempted the question, answered it incorrectly, or left it blank.

A second Physics question was found to have two scientifically valid options; candidates who selected either correct option were awarded full marks for that question as well.

Does This Change the Maximum Score?

No. NEET (UG) 2026 remains scored out of 720 marks. NTA does not reduce the total when a question is dropped — instead, it awards the bonus marks to all candidates, keeping the maximum score consistent at 720. This is standard practice and has been used in previous NEET cycles as well.

How This Affected the Final Merit List

Bonus marks awarded uniformly to all candidates have a limited but real effect on tie-breaking and marginal ranks, particularly for candidates clustered close together in score bands like 500–600 marks, where NTA recorded over 90,780 candidates scoring above 500. Since the adjustment applied equally across the candidate pool, it did not disturb the relative ranking for most students, but it did marginally raise the qualifying cutoff of 715–213 marks for the General/EWS category.

Timeline of the Correction

• 25 June 2026: Provisional answer key published; challenge window opens

• 28 June 2026: Challenge window closes

• 13–15 July 2026: OMR sheets and recorded responses displayed to candidates

• 16 July 2026: Final answer key published, incorporating the dropped-question correction; result declared same day