The successful IIT-JEE candidates celebrate in front of the planetarium in Patna on Wednesday. Picture by Nagendra Kumar Singh

Patna, May 25: The Indian Institute of Technology-Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE) results sparked a flurry of claims and counter-claims among various coaching institutes in the city, each claiming to have performed better than the rest.

While 24 of 30 students made it to the IITs from Anand Kumar’s Super 30, his one-time friend and now competitor, former IPS officer Abhayanand, had to settle for a little less. Thirty-four of Abhayanand’s 91 students have made it to the tech hubs.

Out of Abhayanand’s 34 students this year, 14 are from Bihar. The rest 20 are from the centres in New Delhi, Kanpur and Guwahati.

Abhayanand said: “My main aim is to give youths from socially and economically weaker sections of the society a chance to study at IIT.”

Sources said Karan Rai, a Class XII student of Delhi Public School, is the city topper with an all-India rank of 128.

Rai’s father, additional director-general (law and order) P.N. Rai told The Telegraph: “Karan got the inspiration from his sister Tanvi Rai, an IITian. At present, she is studying in IIT-Guwahati.”

Karan’s mother Sumita Singh is a professor at Patna Science College. His friend, Sahil Agarwal, clinched the 179th rank.

Agarwal, son of a city-based cloth merchant, told The Telegraph: “My family background is business. My father owns a cloth shop at Hathwa market. But my parents have always encouraged me to study and never asked me to sit at the shop. My sister, Sonam Agarwal, is also an IITian. She is at present a student at IIT-Kharagpur.”

For a few, qualifying for the IITs meant a little more.

Shree Krishnapati Tripathi, who secured 94th rank in the all-India physically challenged category, told The Telegraph: “My father is an auto driver. It was my zeal and dedication that helped me clear the IIT-JEE.”

Sources said around 350 students have qualified in IIT-JEE from Patna this year. Chief minister Nitish Kumar congratulated them all.

Representatives of coaching institutes, however, claimed that the number of successful candidates was higher.

Most coaching institutes in the city claimed credit for the success of their students in IIT-JEE, and organised felicitation programmes.

FIIT-JEE coaching institute, which organised a felicitation programme at the planetarium, claimed that 50 of their students have made it to IIT this year. This number, however, is less than last year.

Girish Chandra Mishra, the centre head of FIIT-JEE, Patna, said: “This year, the cut-off mark has gone up compared to the previous years. The cut-off mark this year is 229. In the previous year it was around 185 to 190. The high cut-off marks is in addition to 12 grace marks given to students, as few question in the exam were wrong.”

Paradise Classes, a city-based coaching institute, claimed that Archit Gupta, ranked 14th, is a student of their institute. Ajit Kumar, director, Paradise Classes, told The Telegraph: “Archit Gupta, who took the exam from the Kanpur zone, has done his coaching from Paradise Classes. Gupta’s father is a bank employee in Jaipur.”