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 category students, 30 percentile for disabled and 25 percentile for SC, ST or OBC candidates.
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, there were a total of 1,425 PG seats in 2020, which remained vacant even after the mop-up round of counseling.
The cut-off was revised by the testing authority on the instructions of the Ministry of Health issued on Saturday. In a letter to Dr B Srinivas, Member Secretary, Medical Advisory Committee, NBE Executive Director Dr Meenu Bajpai said, “After due discussion and deliberation, MoHFW in consultation with NMC will decide to reduce the deduction. -Close. Decision has been taken. Considering the above, you are requested to kindly declare the revised result and send the revised result data of the newly qualified candidates. ,
The move has been welcomed by the doctors’ unions, who had made a similar demand earlier. “This is a good step by the government and very necessary. This year the exam was conducted twice due to delay COVID-19And meanwhile many (doctors) worked in the COVID wards, they got COVID themselves, and some lost their family members,” said Dr Rohan Krishnan, president of the Federation of All India Medical Associations (FAIMA).
This, he said, was necessary to ensure that all seats are filled and the existing PG students are not left “overloaded” 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.
Doctors affiliated with FAIMA and Federation of Resident Doctors’ Association had gone on strike in December last year after counseling was postponed due to court cases after a delay of six months in examinations.