Hanumangarh boy on top despite Hindi schooling
Jaipur: In a remarkable achievement that challenges conventional perceptions, Mahesh Kumar from Rajasthan's Hanumangarh district has secured All India Rank 1 in NEET-UG 2025 with a 99.9 percentile, in the results released Saturday by the National Testing Agency.
What makes his success particularly inspiring is his Hindi medium background – something Kumar initially feared would be a disadvantage. Kumar said that in his coaching classes while solving practice test papers he learnt how to make a balance between Hindi and English questions as alternates are given in the exam paper.
"A few months before the exam, pressure increases automatically, and given last year's NEET-UG entrance, I was tensed as to how the paper will be.
Then when we got the question paper, it was a different format...so keeping calm and solving it under pressure was a challenge. After the exam I knew that I won't get a score of 700 like I used to get while solving practice papers, but later when I analysed the answers, I realised that I will get a decent rank, Never thought it would be AIR 1," said Kumar.
Kumar, who hails from the small town of Nohar, was initially hesitant to pursue medical studies, considering instead a career in civil services through Humanities.
"He feared that having studied in Hindi medium throughout, he might not be able to perform in competitive exams like JEE-NEET, which are usually dominated by English medium students. But today, he has done something we never imagined," said his mother, Hemlata Bagwani, a Grade-III teacher.
The turning point came when his sister Himanshi encouraged him to pursue medicine, drawing from her own limited opportunities for higher education outside their hometown. His father, Ramesh Sindhi, is also a Grade-III teacher
Notably, Kumar had to wait an additional year after Class 12 to meet the eligible age requirement for NEET.
While preparing at a coaching institute in Sikar, Kumar received consistent support from his parents, who made regular weekend visits every two months. "We would take a train on Saturday and spend Sunday with Mahesh," shared Bagwani.
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