The Supreme Court on Wednesday sought responses from
the Centre and others on a plea challenging the decision of the National Board
of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS) to drastically reduce the
qualifying cut-off percentiles for NEET PG 2025-26.
A bench of Justices P S Narasimha and Alok Aradhe
issued notices to the Union of India, the NBEMS, the National Medical
Commission and others. The matter is listed for next hearing on February 6.
With over 18,000 postgraduate medical seats across
the country remaining vacant, the Board revised the qualifying percentiles for
NEET PG 2025 admissions, reducing it to zero from 40 percentile for reserved
categories -- which will make even those scoring as low as minus 40 out of 800
to take part in the third round of counselling for PG medical seats.
According to the notice published by NBEMS, the NEET
PG cutoff for the general category has been reduced to seven percentile from
50.
The top court was hearing a plea filed by social
worker Harisharan Devgan, Dr Saurav Kumar, Dr Lakshya Mittal and Dr Akash Soni
which submitted that the cut-off reduction violates Article 14 and Article 21.
The plea contended that eligibility criteria cannot
be altered after commencement of the selection process, as aspirants prepared,
competed, and made career choices based on the originally notified cut-offs.
The petition says that PG medical education cannot
be treated as a commercial exercise and that regulatory authorities are
required to prevent dilution of standards.
Several sections of the medical community have
termed as "unprecedented and illogical" the NBEMS's decision to
drastically reduce the cut-off percentile for candidates across all categories
for NEET PG 2025-26.