SC Asks NBEMS Why NEET-PG Cut-Off Percentiles Were Reduced

New Delhi:The Supreme Court on Friday directed the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS) to explain its decision to sharply reduce the qualifying cut-off percentiles for NEET-PG 2025-26.

A two-judge Bench comprising P.S. Narasimha and Alok Aradhe directed NBEMS to file an affidavit and posted the matter for further hearing after two weeks.

Observing the competing concerns involved, the court said there was a need to strike a balance between preventing wastage of postgraduate medical seats and maintaining academic standards. “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 said.

Senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, appearing for the petitioners, submitted that marks could not be relaxed in postgraduate admissions except for exceptional reasons. He argued that standards at the postgraduate level needed to be stricter.

Earlier, on February 4, the apex court had issued notices to the Centre, NBEMS, the National Medical Commission and other respondents.

The petitions challenge NBEMS’ decision to revise the qualifying percentiles for NEET-PG 2025 admissions after more than 18,000 postgraduate medical seats remained vacant across the country. The Board reduced the cut-off for reserved categories to zero percentile from 40, allowing candidates with scores as low as minus 40 out of 800 to participate in the third round of counselling. For the general category, the cut-off was reduced to seven percentile from 50.

The court was hearing pleas filed by social worker Harisharan Devgan and doctors Saurav Kumar, Lakshya Mittal and Akash Soni, who contended that the cut-off reduction violated Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution.

The petitioners argued that eligibility criteria could not be altered after the commencement of the selection process, as candidates had prepared and made career decisions based on the originally notified cut-offs. They further contended that postgraduate medical education could not be treated as a commercial exercise and that regulatory authorities were obligated to prevent dilution of standards.

Several sections of the medical community have described the NBEMS decision to drastically lower cut-off percentiles across categories as “unprecedented and illogical.”