When asked why the two girls were not declared joint toppers even after scoring the same marks, PSEB Vice-Chairman Varinder Bhatia said that as per rule, if two or more students score the same marks, the youngest is declared the topper.

Lovepreet, who was born in December 2009, is six months younger to Gurankit, who is a June born of the same year.
Samarpreet Kaur of Guru Nanak Public Senior Secondary school, Ludhiana, stood third in the state by securing 99.67 percent marks 598/600. This year, the first three rank holders were all girl students.

Speaking to The Indian Express, state topper Lovepreet said that she and Gurankit are friends and mostly study together. “I took the admission in this school in class VI but Gurankit came here in class VIII. We soon became good friends and spend most of the time together in school. My family is very supportive and my parents are always very encouraging,” said the 14-year-old.

When asked what was her mantra to success, she said that she made it a point to study every day. When I had finished all the chapters, I would keep revising whenever I had the time,” said Lovepreet, whose father works as a driver and mother is a homemaker.

Gurankit added that to ensure good marks, both friends decided to not take up any games this year in school. “I want to be a doctor and I am very focused on that. We both had mutually decided to not take up games this year and so far it seems our decision was right,” said Gurankit, whose father works as an electrician.

The PSEB V-C added that the overall pass percent this year is 98.01 against 98.25 per cent in the previous year and 99.88 per cent in 2021. This year, while the pass percentage of girls is 98.68, the same for boys is 97.41 per cent.

Adding that the education standard in government schools is improving, the V-C said that the two state toppers are from the government school.

PSEB also declared a merit list of 356 students who secured marks between 97 and 100 per cent. As many as 310 girls are in the merit list while only 46 are boys. A total of 2,98,127 students appeared for the exam this year and 2,92,206 passed. Result of 17 students is late. Six transgender students appeared in the exams and all passed the exam. At 99.33 per cent, Pathankot has the highest pass percentage and the lowest of 96.79 per cent was in Moga.

While Urdu saw a 100 per cent pass percentage, Punjabi saw 99.79% students passing the exam. English saw a pass percentage of 99.08% and Mathematics witnessed a pass percentage of 99.56%.

On cracking on the copying menace, Bhatia said that only one Unfair Means Case (UMC) was reported in the examination. He added that there is a significant decrease in the UMC due to the strictness. “We took many steps and around 300 flying squad teams were deployed during the examination,” Examination Control head Janak Raj Mehrok said.

While there is no revaluation criteria for the students, they can get their answer sheets rechecked by applying under the RTI Act.