Fix the Calendar, Not the Cutoff. Rethinking NEET-PG 2025

A candidate who scored minus twelve out of 800 has been given a seat for MD Physiology. Another, with four marks, got MS Orthopaedics in a government medical college. A third, with minus eight, will train in Biochemistry. A fourth, with twelve marks, got MD Forensic Medicine. ^{1 2 3}

I did not make these up. They come from the third round of NEET-PG 2025-26 counselling, which ended on 13 February 2026, as reported in the MCC data and the national press.

The qualifying percentile for reserved categories is now zero. In an exam with negative marking, that works out to minus 40 marks. For the general category, the percentile fell from the 50th to the 7th. In marks, that is 276 down to 103.

What NEET-PG got right

Before I criticise anything, I should say what this exam fixed.

Before 2017, PG admissions in India were a mess. Students sat a dozen entrance exams, travelled across the country, spent money they didn’t have, and had no guarantee that the process was fair. Seat-blocking syndicates worked in the open. The Vyapam scandal in Madhya Pradesh is the best known fraud, and it was only the tip. ^{4 5}

“One Nation, One Exam” put an end to that kind of seat-selling. I remember the relief among my colleagues and students when it was announced. One exam. One rank. No more five papers in three weeks. That was a real achievement.

It came with one weakness, and I will come to it.

The design is sound. What fails is the running of it. We swapped the corruption of the old system for the delays of the new one.

The timeline and the numbers

NEET-PG 2025 was held on 3 August 2025. The first round of counselling ran through October and November. The second finished in early December. ⁶

After two rounds, more than 18,000 PG seats were still empty. About 9,000 of them were All India Quota seats. The Minister of State for Health, Anupriya Patel, told the Rajya Sabha this on 10 February 2026. She called the seats precious. Each one, she said, took years to sanction and lakhs to set up. ⁷

On 9 January 2026, the Ministry directed NBEMS to lower the qualifying percentiles. NBEMS notified the new cutoffs on 13 January. ⁸

This has happened before. In 2023 the cutoff also went down to the zero percentile, though the lowest qualifying mark that year was five. In 2024 it was cut to the 5th percentile for all categories.

A measure meant for one bad year now comes round every year. It is no longer an exception. It is policy. ⁹

Eligibility exam or ranking exam?

Regulation 9 of the Postgraduate Medical Education Regulations (PGMER) 2000, framed by the old Medical Council of India, is clear. A candidate needs at least the 50th percentile to be eligible for a PG seat. For reserved categories, the minimum is the 40th. ¹⁰

There is a proviso. The government may lower these percentiles in a given year if “sufficient candidates are not available” in a category. It was written as a safety valve for unusual years.

That is how an eligibility exam is written. If NEET-PG were only a ranking exam, there would be no cutoff to lower and no proviso to invoke. The very fact that a minimum exists, and has to be lowered by notification each year to fill seats, shows what the regulation meant. NEET-PG is first an eligibility exam, with a ranking added for those who are eligible. ¹¹

There is a clean way out. If the administration wants NEET-PG to rank and nothing more, it can amend Regulation 9, remove the cutoff, and let the rank list decide. No yearly notification. No proviso. That would be a clear policy.

What we have now is a regulation that says one thing and a practice that does another, year after year.

Why are 18,000 seats empty?

Every policy meeting should begin with this question.

It isn’t that too few doctors want to specialise. The question is which seats are empty, and why. I can see three reasons. Lowering the cutoff touches none of them.

Fees. Some private and deemed university seats charge very high fees. I have heard of clinical seats costing three to five crore rupees over three years. Think of a young MBBS graduate who is expected to look after ageing parents, or at least not to be a burden on them. She looks at that number, leaves the seat, drops a year and tries again. Can you blame her?

Quality. Many colleges don’t have enough faculty, enough patients or the basic infrastructure to train a specialist. Students know which ones. Word goes round, and those seats stay empty. ¹²

Non-clinical branches. Anatomy, Physiology, Biochemistry, Pharmacology and Microbiology struggle to fill seats every year. I have taught in a medical college and seen this up close. The answer is to make these careers worth choosing: better pay, a clear path of promotion, academic rewards, research funding. You can’t fix low demand by letting everyone in.

The seats were not empty for want of candidates

The United Doctors Front has filed a PIL in the Supreme Court against the NBEMS notification. ¹³

Their argument is simple. The rules allow a cutoff to be lowered only when there are not enough eligible candidates for the seats. For about 80,000 PG seats, they told the Court, more than 1,28,000 candidates had already qualified under the original percentiles. ¹⁴

So the cutoff was not lowered because nobody could clear it. It was lowered because qualified candidates chose not to join certain seats in certain colleges. That is a different problem, and it needs a different cure.

The missing batch

Residents hold up clinical care in medical colleges and government hospitals. They run the emergency department. They cover the ICU overnight. They share the outpatient load, and they look after inpatients before and after consultant rounds.

Without them, these hospitals don’t slow down. They struggle.

A teaching hospital runs on three batches: first, second and third-year residents, each with their own duties. When admissions slip by months, one batch is missing for most of the year. Many hospitals are running on two batches, some on one and a half. We have been calling it the “missing batch” for a while now.

What follows is easy to predict. The residents who are present absorb the work of those who are not. Emergency departments stay short of hands. Clinics stretch. Doctors who should get twelve to twenty-four hours off after a night shift are called back, because nobody is there to replace them. Some end up working 100-hour weeks to plug the gap.

At that point you are not training a doctor. You are wearing one down. Empathy goes first. Errors follow. These are not bad doctors. They are tired human beings.

A 2025 cross-sectional study found significant burnout, high perceived stress and falling empathy among postgraduate trainees in India. ¹⁵ An older paper was titled “Burnout: The Resident Evil.” It wasn’t exaggerating. ¹⁶

One of my residents did two or three 36-hour duties a week for many months. The NEET-PG exam, the results, the counselling and the seat allotment were all running late. We appointed non-PG junior residents to take some of the ward work off him. Emergency duties are a different matter. Only someone with a longer commitment, a three-year residency, can carry those hours at that intensity.

On morning rounds after his night duties, he would stutter, stumble or miss things during case presentations. I worried. I supported him, covered for him, gave him leave when I could. He wasn’t the only one. The whole department was stretched. But it is his face on those morning rounds that I remember.

Not every institution can do what we did. Not every resident is that lucky.

Reservation is not the problem

You know how these debates go online, so let me say this plainly.

The zero percentile applies to reserved categories. Social media has turned it into a fight between reservation and merit. That is the wrong argument.

Reservation is a constitutional commitment. It exists so that communities that were kept out for centuries can reach higher education. I believe in that purpose.

The real question is what happens after the seat is given. Does the college have the faculty to teach? Are there enough patients to learn from? Three years later, can that doctor walk into a hospital and handle sick patients with confidence?

This is what troubles me most. Candidates from reserved categories are often the ones placed in the least-resourced colleges. They carry the worst of it: the missing batch, the 100-hour weeks, the absent faculty.

Reservation was never meant to hand out degrees. It was meant to produce doctors, teachers, surgeons and scientists from communities that were left behind. That happens only when the seat leads to real training and a real career. Otherwise the purpose fails.

Every seat, reserved or not, should lead to competence. A line on a degree certificate is not enough.

One exam a year is too few

This is the weakness I mentioned earlier, and it touches every candidate.

NEET-PG is held once a year. You prepare for twelve months, you fall ill on the day, and you wait another year. A family emergency the night before costs you the same. So does anxiety that freezes you in the hall. You lose a full year of your working life.

Here is a simple fix. Hold NEET-PG twice a year, eight to ten weeks apart. That is enough time to keep the papers secure and to set a separate paper for each sitting. Let candidates sit both. Rank them on the better score.

This isn’t a radical idea. INI-CET is the entrance exam for AIIMS, JIPMER, PGIMER and NIMHANS. It is held twice a year, for the January and July sessions, for the same pool of graduates. ¹⁷ JEE Main, run by the National Testing Agency, also has two sessions a year. Candidates can sit both, and the better score counts. ¹⁸ Lakhs of engineering aspirants use this every year. Nobody says it weakens the exam.

Two papers will differ in difficulty. JEE Main handles this with percentile normalisation, and NEET-PG would need to do the same. It is standard practice.

Abroad, the USMLE and the PLAB both offer several test dates in a year. ^{19 20}

Some will worry about the cost: more papers, more invigilation, more coordination. A country that runs UPSC, JEE, NEET-UG, the bank exams and dozens of state exams every year can manage two sittings of NEET-PG.

What needs to change

The foundation is solid. A single national exam was the right idea. The administration that built it can run it to a calendar.

A fixed calendar

“Exam in January, joining in May.” Written in stone, no exceptions. If the bank and civil service exams can keep a timetable, so can NEET-PG.

An honest look at the vacancies

If 18,000 seats go empty, ask why. Is it fees? Poor colleges? Branches nobody wants? Then deal with each one, by regulating fees and enforcing standards in the colleges. Lowering the cutoff is like treating malaria with paracetamol instead of chloroquine.

Faster hearings

The Supreme Court’s involvement is welcome, and it is hearing the matter regularly. But when admissions are stuck in litigation, patients pay for the delay. Every month a teaching hospital runs without its full set of residents is a month in which patients get less attention. That should count as a reason to hear such cases early.

Exit exams that mean something

Some say entrance scores matter little and training is what counts. I have seen average scorers become outstanding clinicians, so there is some truth in that. But a policy can’t rest on it. We need honest assessment during training, and a rigorous final examination before anyone is certified as a specialist.

I can’t see the political or financial pressures behind these decisions. There may be some I don’t know about. But from a teaching hospital that runs on its residents, the way ahead looks clear to me.

Fix the calendar. The rest will follow.

In 2027, I would like to write about how we teach residents, and what they teach us. I would rather not write about whether someone who scored close to zero should be holding a scalpel. I would rather not write about the missing batch again.

Three years from now, the names on those allotment lists will be called specialists. Their patients will never see the list. They will simply trust the title.

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Author’s note
These are my personal views, as a doctor and a citizen. They are not the views of my institution. I have no political affiliation, and no financial interest in any medical college, coaching institute or edtech platform.
The facts here come from official notifications, court proceedings, parliamentary statements and published news reports. Please check them yourself and form your own view.

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1. NEET-PG 2025 Round 3 Counselling Allotment Data. Medical Counselling Committee (MCC), Directorate General of Health Services. Available at: Link. Accessed: 17 Feb 2026. ↩︎
2. NEET-PG row: Cut-offs reduced, PG seats filled at single-digit scores. Business Standard. 10 Feb 2026. Available at: Link. Date Accessed: 17 Feb 2026. ↩︎
3. Doctor who scored 9/800 in NEET entrance bags PG seat; plunging cut-offs spark outrage among medical bodies. Available at: Link. Date Accessed: 23 Feb 2026. ↩︎
4. CBI Files Supplementary Chargesheet Against 73 Accused VYAPAM Scam in a Case Related to MPPMT-2012 Examination. Available at: Link. Accessed: 22 Feb 2026. ↩︎
5. Rao S. When corruption becomes the norm and ethical conduct an exception. Indian J Med Ethics. 2016;1(1 NS):54. Available at: Link. Accessed: 22 Feb 2026. ↩︎
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7. Rajya Sabha proceedings, 10 February 2026. Reply by Union Minister of State for Health Anupriya Patel on vacant PG medical seats. Government of India, Parliament of India. ↩︎
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10. Medical Council of India. Postgraduate Medical Education Regulations (PGMER), 2000. Regulation 9: Minimum qualifying criteria for admission to postgraduate medical courses. Available at: Link Accessed: 24 Feb 2026. ↩︎
11. Why cutoff percentile for NEET-PG counselling was reduced to 0 for SC, ST. Business Standard. 14 Jan 2026. Available at: Link Accessed: 17 Feb 2026. ↩︎
12. National Medical Commission. Minimum Requirements for Annual MD/MS/PG Diploma Admissions Regulations. Available at: Link. Accessed: 22 Feb 2026. ↩︎
13. NEET-PG: Plea in Supreme Court Challenges Lowering of NEET-PG 2025-26 Qualifying Cut-Off Percentile. Available at: Link. Accessed: 19 Feb 2026. ↩︎
14. SupremeCourt hears plea challenging reduction of cut-off percentile in NEET PG 2025. Available at: Link. Accessed: 23 Feb 2026. ↩︎
15. Lal JV, Mirza K, Krishnakumar M, Johnson RC, D’Souza MC. Empathy, Burnout, and Perceived Stress Among Postgraduate Medical Trainees in India: A Cross-Sectional Study. Indian J Orthop. 2025;59(10):1744-1752. Available at: Link. Accessed: 26 Jan 2026. ↩︎
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17. All India Institute of Medical Sciences. INI-CET Examination Schedule. Available at: Link. Accessed: 24 Feb 2026. ↩︎
18. National Testing Agency. JEE (Main) Information Bulletin. Available at: Link .Accessed: 24 Feb 2026. ↩︎
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20. General Medical Council, UK. PLAB test: dates and fees. Available at: Link. Accessed: 24 Feb 2026. ↩︎