‘Stuck in limbo with no clarity’: Resident doctors struggle as NEET PG counselling delays double their workload

However, another silent crisis is emerging beyond the distress caused by delayed admissions: overburdened resident doctors who are struggling under excessive workloads. With new postgraduate batches yet to join, current residents have to work nearly twice as much, resulting in exhaustion, burnout, and concerns about the quality of patient care.

At the same time, delays and shifting cut-offs benefit private medical institutes, where seats are filling up quickly, sometimes at exorbitant fees, while government institutions continue to suffer from a shortage of junior doctors.

The NEET PG 2024 exam took place on August 11 after being rescheduled from its original date of June 23. The exam had to be cancelled the night before it was supposed to occur, coinciding with ongoing concerns surrounding the NEET (undergraduate) exam, which had faced allegations of paper leaks and other discrepancies. Moreover, with the NEET PG 2025 exam scheduled on June 15 close on the heels of the 2024 counselling, students preparing for the next cycle now face additional pressure.

A system at breaking point

The NEET PG counselling process, crucial for filling medical seats nationwide, has faced multiple delays due to legal challenges, policy changes, and administrative inefficiencies. This has left hospitals severely short-staffed, with existing residents forced to take on additional duties in the absence of incoming junior doctors.

“Every time counselling gets delayed, the resident doctors suffer. We are already short-staffed, and now, without the incoming batch, the workload has become unbearable,” says a second-year medical student at a government hospital in Delhi.

He explains that resident doctors, who form the backbone of hospital services, work extra shifts, sometimes exceeding 24 to 30 hours at a stretch, just to compensate for the missing junior workforce. This has affected their mental and physical well-being and raised concerns about the quality of patient care.

Aspirants stuck in uncertainty

On the other side, NEET PG aspirants waiting for their classes to begin are equally frustrated. Many had already faced months of preparation stress, only to be met with further delays.

A NEET PG aspirant from Dibrugarh, Assam, says, “We have already spent months waiting for the process to start. Some of us left our jobs, stopped practising, and dedicated ourselves entirely to preparation. We are just stuck in limbo with no clarity on when we can begin our PG courses.”

Another NEET PG aspirant from Jaipur says, “I feel completely stuck. My wedding was planned for later this year, assuming I would have secured admission by now. But with these endless delays, my family is pressuring me to reconsider my plans. They don’t understand why I can’t give them a fixed timeline. I worked so hard to get here, and now I feel like I’m being forced to choose between my career and my personal life. It’s exhausting and heartbreaking.”

With each delay, the NEET PG cut-off marks keep getting lowered, which creates an unfair advantage for those who didn’t initially qualify but now manage to secure a seat. “It feels like the whole system is designed to reward those who wait instead of those who worked hard from the start,” says another aspirant who is now practising at a government hospital in Lucknow.

In 2023, the qualifying percentile for the NEET PG exam was lowered to zero across all categories. In 2022, the cut-off for general category candidates was reduced from the 50th percentile to the 35th percentile. For unreserved persons with disabilities (PwD), the cut-off was decreased from the 45th percentile to the 20th percentile.

Additionally, for students belonging to Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), and Other Backward Classes (OBC) categories—including PwD candidates from SC, ST, and OBC—the cut-off was dropped to the 20th percentile from the 40th percentile in 2022. Both these changes faced significant criticism from doctors’ organisations and students.

While government hospitals struggle with staff shortages, private medical colleges appear to be the biggest beneficiaries of the delay. Another NEET PG aspirant who could not clear the entrance test this year said that with counselling dates being repeatedly pushed back and cut-offs reduced, many private colleges have already started filling seats through management quotas and NRI admissions at steep fees.

“Private colleges charge anywhere between Rs 50 lakh to Rs 1 crore for PG seats. With the delay, they are capitalising on desperate students who don’t want to waste another year,” says a resident doctor from Kerala.

Furthermore, frequent cut-off reductions mean that private medical colleges can admit students who may not have met the original merit-based criteria, leading to concerns over the quality of future specialists.

As per the Centre, the number of medical colleges in India has grown from 387 in 2014 to 780 in 2024. Similarly, an increase of 135 per cent in PG seats from 31,185 in 2014 to 73,157 in 2024 is seen, according to data presented in the Rajya Sabha in December 2024.

Academic calendar thrown out of gear

Another major fallout of the delay is the disruption of the entire academic calendar. The late admissions mean that PG courses that should ideally begin in May or June will now be pushed further, affecting clinical training schedules and research work. This cycle then repeats, causing further delays in the next year’s intake, leading to perpetual disruption in medical education.

“This affects not just students but also the healthcare system. With a shortage of trained specialists, the ultimate sufferers are the patients,” says a third-year surgical resident in Mumbai.

Doctors and students alike are calling for a permanent fix, perhaps in the form of stricter adherence to counselling timelines, policy reforms to prevent repeated delays, and better planning to ensure that government medical institutions do not bear the brunt of these inefficiencies.

Exhausted resident doctors continue to work long hours, patients face the impact of staff shortages, and thousands of medical aspirants remain uncertain while private medical colleges profit from the chaos.