NMC to soon lower NEET PG 2023 cut-off: Official

Dr Gupta informed indianexpress.com that lowering the cut-off will not be a compromise to medical education as the students come after clearing a rigorous syllabus of MBBS.

“The reduction in NEET PG 2023 cut-off will not lower the standard of medical education, nor it will be a compromise to the service. The students will anyway be admitted to the postgraduate programmes after a rigorous MBBS course. The syllabus for the MBBS programmes is designed in such a way that it serves the medical needs of the country,” he said.

However, the NMC member has not confirmed when the commission will announce the decreased NEET PG cut-off and what the revised cut-off will be.

Many PwD candidates requested the commission on social media platforms to issue the revised decreased cut-off before the release of the round-3 seat allotment result as after it, all seats will be converted into general category seats.

Sir I am pwd candidate,if #revisionofcutoff doesn’t occur during AI r3 ,then pwd candidates will suffer the most as our seats will be converted to UR category n others will take that seat.revision of cutoff won’t be useful after AI r3 at any cost to us.

— Dr.Priyanka (@DrPriya279) September 13, 2023

The IMA in a letter to the Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare on September 13 had urged the minister to reconsider the cut-off criteria to include more number of students in PG and reduce wastage of seats. As many as 3,744 remained vacant after NEET PG counselling last year.

Dr Sharad Kumar Agarwal, IMA president, said that lowering the cut-off will not only reduce the number of seats remaining vacant every year but also provide the medical education system with desired faculties in the next three years.

Asking the reason why the seats cannot be filled in spite of the vast number of applications and students in MBBS, the president said: “NEET PG paper is designed tough and there is a mismatch in the standard of the question papers and the curriculum set for the state medical colleges.”

Agarwal further said that NMC must relook at the structure of the papers and the course structure at the medical colleges to bridge the wide gap. The National Medical Commission (NMC), Kumar added, should lower the standard of the question paper to include a large base of aspirants to clear NEET PG. “However, including a large base of students clearing the exam will not mean the standard of practicing doctors will decrease or will be detrimental to the service of the nation,” he added.

The National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS) have been issuing a revised NEET PG cut-off every year since 2017. The NEET PG cut-off for general category candidates was reduced from the 50th percentile to 42.50th percentile in 2017, while it was reduced to 35th in 2018, 44th in 2019, 30th percentile in 2020, 35th in 2021 and 2022. 

Last year, the cut-off for unreserved PwD candidates was dropped from the 45th percentile to the 20th and for students under SC, ST, OBC (including PwD of SC, ST, OBC), the cut-off was reduced to the 20th percentile from 40th.