Explain cut in qualifying cut-off, SC to NBEMS
The Supreme Court on Friday directed the National Board of Examination in Medical Sciences (NBEMS) to explain its decision to drastically reduce the qualifying cut-off percentiles for NEET-PG 2025-26.
A bench of Justices PS Narasimha and Alok Aradhe directed NBEMS to file an affidavit and posted the matter for hearing after two weeks.
“On one hand, we have to see that seats should not get wasted. At the same time, there is pressure that candidates are not coming, so please reduce the cutoff.
“Then the argument will be that the standards are being lowered and the counter-argument is that seats are going waste. So, somewhere there has to be a balance,” the bench observed while asking NBEMS to file an affidavit.
During the hearing, senior advocate Gopal Sankarnarayanan, appearing for the petitioners, submitted that marks cannot be relaxed in PG admissions, except for exceptional reasons.
He said standards need to be stricter at the postgraduate level. The top court on February 4 had issued notices to the Union of India, the NBEMS, the National Medical Commission and others.
With over 18,000 postgraduate medical seats across the country remaining vacant, the Board revised the qualifying percentiles for NEET-PG 2025 admissions, reducing it to zero from 40 percentiles for reserved categories — which will make even those scoring as low as minus 40 out of 800, to take part in the third round of counselling for PG medical seats.
According to the notice published by NBEMS, the NEET PG cutoff for the general category has been reduced to seven percentiles from 50.
The top court was hearing a plea filed by social worker Harisharan Devgan, Dr Saurav Kumar, Dr Lakshya Mittal and Dr Akash Soni, submitting that the cut-off reduction violates Article 14 and Article 21.
The plea contended that the eligibility criteria cannot be altered after commencement of the selection process, as aspirants prepared, competed and made career choices based on the originally notified cut-offs.
The petition said PG medical education cannot be treated as a commercial exercise and that regulatory authorities are required to prevent dilution of standards.
Several sections of the medical community have termed as “unprecedented and illogical” the NBEMS’ decision to drastically reduce the cut-off percentile for candidates across all categories for NEET-PG 2025-26.
