CBSE Class XII pass percentage dips, Noida's Raksha Gopal tops

Raksha Gopal, a student of Humanities from Noida in Uttar Pradesh, topped the Class XII board examinations in the country by securing a whopping 99.6 per cent marks as the Central Board of Secondary Education declared the results on Sunday.

She also set an example for others with her remarkable feat as getting high scores in the Humanity stream is always considered to be tougher than in Science and Commerce streams. Last year, Sukriti Gupta, a Science student from Delhi, had topped the Class XII board examinations by scoring 99.4%.

Raksha, a student of Amity International School in Noida, secured 498 marks out of a possible 500. She got 100 marks each in the English Core, Political Science and Economics. She just fell short of two marks—one each in History and Psychology—to get a perfect 100 in each of the five subjects.

Chandigarh's Bhoomi Sawant, a student of Science stream at DAV school, grabbed the second position in the country by securing a total of 497 marks (99.4 %) out of 500 in the board examinations.

Aditya Jain and Mannat Luthra, who too were from Chandigarh, came third in the country as both of them secured 496 marks in all (99.2%) out of 500. Both Aditya and Mannat were students of Commerce at Bhavan Vidyalaya in Chandigarh.

“I was expecting about 95 per cent, but 99.6 per cent was unimaginable," Raksha told a news agency. Among the special students, Ajay R Raj of St Thomas School, Mukkolakkal, Thiruvananthapuram, emerged as the country topper as he scored 98 % (490 marks out of 500) in the board examinations.

Lakshmi PV of Palghat Lions School, Pallakad, Kerala grabbed the second position by scoring 97.2% (486 marks out of 500) in the examinations while Darshana MV of Nalanda International Public School, Krishnagiri, Tamilnadu, came third with 96.6 % score (483 marks out of 500).

Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Prakash Javadekar spoke to the toppers and congratulated them for their performance. “Congratulations to all my young friends who have successfully passed the CBSE Class XII exams & best wishes for future endeavours,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted.

More than 10.20 lakh students of 10,673 schools took this year's Class XII board examinations which saw girls performing better than boys for yet another year. While the pass percentage of the girls was pegged at 87.50, only 78% boys cleared the examinations held by the CBSE from March 9 to April 29 across the country.

The over all pass percentage of students remained at 82.02 with a little over 8.37 lakh students coming out with flying colours in the examinations. Comparative data, released by the CBSE, indicated a decline in the number of students clearing the board examinations by 1.03% over that of the examinations held last year.

Thiruvananthapuram region of the CBSE registered the highest pass percentage (95.62 percent), followed by Chennai 92.60 % and Delhi 88.37%.

Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (JNVs) registered the highest pass percentage of students (95.73%), followed by Kendriya Vidyalayas (Kvs) 94.60 %. The over all pass percentage of the students of the State governments schools remained at 82.29, government aided 81.63 and private schools 79.27.

“Post result CBSE Counselling will begin from May 28t and will continue till June 11 daily from 8 am to 10 pm,” the board said in a statement.