Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated the students who appeared for CBSE exams this year after the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) finally declared the class 12th result on Sunday morning. PM Modi congratulated his ‘young friends’ and wished them the best in their future endeavours. “Congratulations to all my young friends who have successfully passed the CBSE Class XII exams & best wishes for future endeavours,” he posted on Twitter after the result was declared.

Earlier in the day, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) had announced the results of Class XII examination with Noida girl Raksha Gopal scoring a whopping 99.6 percent to bag the first rank. The second and third positions were bagged by Chandigarh students Bhumi Sawant and Aditya Jain who scored 99.4 per cent and 99.2 per cent respectively. As soon as the result was declared, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar also talked to the toppers and congratulated them.

READ | CBSE 12th result 2017: Delhi University admissions – Find out where you stand

This year the passing percentage went down from 83 percent to 82%, a senior CBSE official told PTI. The agency reported that Board has also started a helpline with toll-free number 18000118004 for psychological counselling post class XII board results. The result was declared in all 10 regions of CBSE. The Delhi region has the highest number of candidates (2,58,321), followed by Panchkula with 1,84,557 and Ajmer with 1,31,449 candidates.

Watch what Raksha Goyal said:

The result was delayed because of uncertainty over grace marks. Aiming to check high cut-offs in colleges, the CBSE had scrapped the moderation policy under which grace marks are given to the students in exams for difficult questions. However, following the intervention of the Delhi High Court, the board decided to implement the change from next year.