Centre approves reduction of NEET-PG exam cutoff by 15 percentile

New Delhi: The Union Health Ministry on Saturday has approved the motion to reduce cut off by 15 percentile, across all categories for the NEET PG exam, reported IANS.

In an official communication to the National Board of Examinations, the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) has said that it has been decided by the health ministry to reduce the cut off by 15 percentile across all categories.

"After due discussion and deliberations, it has been decided by the MoHFW in consultation with NMC with prior approval from HFM to reduce the cut-off by 15 percentile across all categories i.e. the qualifying percentile for a general category may be reduced to 35th percentile, for PH(Genl) to 30th percentile and for reserved category (SC/ST/OBC) be reduced to 25th percentile," said the MCC`s letter to the NBE with the name of Dr B Srinivas, ADG (ME) and member secretary MCC.

The step has been taken to fill up over 8,000 vacant seats for postgraduate medical seats and aims to prevent any seat wastage in times when medical professionals are needed the most owing to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Dr Rohan Krishnan, President of the Federation of All India Medical Association (FAIMA) Doctors Association welcomed the health ministry’s step.

"The examination was delayed twice due to Covid and the counselling process was also delayed due to the pandemic and court cases. This is the admission of the 2021 batch which is taking place in 2022 due to delay. Still, around 6,500 seats are vacant so we were expecting such steps from the government," he said.

Talking about the impact the cut-off reduction would have on the students, he said: "Reducing the cut off does not mean reducing the merit criteria anyway."

(With inputs from IANS)