Overview
- An MCC notice on January 13 lowered NEET PG qualifying thresholds to the 7th percentile for General/EWS (103/800) and to zero for SC/ST/OBC, effectively setting a revised cutoff of minus 40.
- Resident doctor bodies, including FORDA, denounced the move as a collapse of exam governance that dilutes merit and risks patient safety.
- A public interest litigation filed by Harisharan Devgan and doctors including Saurav Kumar, Lakshya Mittal and Akash Soni challenges the reductions under Articles 14 and 21 and is expected to be listed soon, according to the petitioners’ counsel.
- NBEMS and counselling authorities have argued the reductions were needed to fill more than 18,000 vacant postgraduate seats after Round 2, a rationale critics say ignores mismanagement that created the vacancies.
- Context for the backlash includes the Supreme Court’s May ruling against a two-shift exam format, the absence of answer-key challenges, 22 disqualifications without an appeal path, long-distance centre allocations, and extended counselling that hospitals say worsened staffing and diagnostic delays.