Mumbai: When Madhav Viradiya moved from Vadodara to Mumbai two years ago to prepare for JEE, topping Maharashtra was not something he had allowed himself to imagine. The plan was simple and familiar to thousands of engineering aspirants: relocate, train hard and hope for a good rank. But when the answer key for JEE (Main) 2026 was released, the numbers told a different story. Madhav had scored 286 out of 300 — and a bonus awarded for an incorrect question pushed his score to 291, sealing a perfect 100 percentile and the state top rank.The JEE (Main) 2026 results, declared on Monday, produced 12 candidates with a 100 percentile. Rajasthan led with three toppers, followed by Andhra Pradesh with two, while Bihar, Telangana, Odisha, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana and Maharashtra had one topper each.
For Madhav, engineering was a natural choice. His father is an engineer and his elder brother studies at IIT Jodhpur. He moved to Mumbai with his mother and enrolled at Narayana e-Techno School, which has now produced Maharashtra’s 100 percentiler for the third year in a row. “This is the third consecutive year we have a 100 percentile and the state topper from the same campus,” said Siddhesh Naik, dean (academics).Madhav says his JEE preparation began in Class 10, though the grind intensified after Class 11. Alongside JEE training, he also appeared for astronomy Olympiads in Classes XI and XII. “Preparing for JEE is tough,” he told TOI. “I sacrificed a lot — meeting friends rarely, very little time for fun. Initially it felt punishing, but I got used to it. I studied around 10 to 12 hours a day.”His achievement comes against the backdrop of a massive national cohort. Over 13.55 lakh candidates registered for Paper 1 (BE/BTech), though only 13.04 lakh appeared for the exam, reflecting the familiar drop between registration and attendance.Men continued to dominate the pool, with 8.87 lakh male registrations compared to 4.67 lakh female candidates, a pattern that held across General, EWS, OBC-NCL, SC and ST categories. The OBC-NCL category formed the largest block of candidates, followed by the General category, while Scheduled Tribe candidates remained the smallest group.
