The National Board of Examination (NBE) has reduced the NEET-PG cut-off by 15 per cent to fill up over 6,000 seats for postgraduate courses in medical that remain vacant even after two rounds of counselling. NBE conducts NEET-PG, the qualifying examination for these PG courses in the country.
According to NBE, the NEET-PG cut-off has been revised to 35 percentile for general students, 30 percentile for persons with disabilities and 25 percentile for SC, ST or OBC candidates.
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Out of just 42,000 PG seats across the country, around 1.5 lakh doctors apply for NEET-PG after completing MBBS degree and one-year compulsory internship. However, according to NBE, despite the number of doctors applying for PG courses being more than three times the number of seats, 6,266 seats are left vacant for the final NEET-PG mop-up round in 2021.
As per the data provided by the Union Health Ministry in the Lok Sabha, in 2020, there were a total of 1,425 PG seats which remained vacant even after the mop-up round of counselling.
The cut-off was revised by the testing authority on the instructions of the Ministry of Health issued on Saturday. In a letter from Dr B Srinivas, Member Secretary, Medical Counseling Committee, to Executive Director, NBE, Dr Meenu Bajpai, it is stated,
“After due discussion and deliberation, it has been decided by MoHFW to reduce the cut-off from counseling of NMC.”
Federation of All India Medical Associations (FAIMA) President Dr Rohan Krishnan has welcomed the move by doctors’ associations, who had made a similar demand earlier. This is a good step by the government and very necessary. This year, the exams were delayed twice due to Covid-19, and in the meantime many (doctors) worked in the Covid wards.
This, he said, was necessary to ensure that all the seats are filled and the existing PG students are not left “overburdened” again. “We still need more doctors, no more than 6,000 seats can be left vacant,” he said. PG students also work as Junior Residents in the respective hospitals.