NEW DELHI, Feb 4: The Supreme Court on Wednesday issued notice to the Centre and other authorities on a plea challenging the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences’ (NBEMS) decision to drastically reduce the qualifying cut-off percentiles for NEET-PG 2025-26.
A bench comprising Justices P S Narasimha and Alok Aradhe sought responses from the Union of India, NBEMS, the National Medical Commission and others, and listed the matter for further hearing on February 6.
The challenge comes after NBEMS revised the qualifying percentiles for NEET-PG 2025 admissions, citing over 18,000 vacant postgraduate medical seats across the country. Under the revised criteria, the cut-off for reserved categories has been reduced to zero from 40 percentile, allowing candidates scoring as low as minus 40 out of 800 to participate in the third round of counselling.
For the general category, the cut-off percentile has been lowered to seven from the earlier 50, as per the NBEMS notification.
The court was hearing a plea filed by social worker Harisharan Devgan along with Dr Saurav Kumar, Dr Lakshya Mittal and Dr Akash Soni, who contended that the drastic reduction in cut-offs violates Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution.
The petition argued that eligibility criteria cannot be altered after the commencement of the selection process, as candidates prepare and make career decisions based on the originally notified cut-offs. It further submitted that postgraduate medical education cannot be treated as a commercial exercise and that regulatory authorities are duty-bound to prevent dilution of academic standards.
Several sections of the medical community have described the NBEMS decision to sharply reduce cut-off percentiles across all categories for NEET-PG 2025-26 as “unprecedented and illogical.” (Agencies)
