Vacancies, Not Merit, Driving PG Admissions Policy

Anger over relaxed admission norms sparks nationwide backlash; the deeper structural failures demand scrutiny.

A large number of vacant seats in the third round of counselling for postgraduate medical admissions has pushed policymakers into a controversial corner. In a bid to fill these seats, the Medical Counselling Committee’s decision to sharply lower cut-offs has triggered widespread criticism from across the medical fraternity. The National Medical Commission (NMC) has publicly expressed its disapproval, professional associations of doctors have warned of serious consequences for patient care, and the matter has now reached the Supreme Court. Against this backdrop, a fundamental question confronts the Union government: will it prioritise the quality of medical education or dilute standards merely to fill vacant seats?

For the 2025–26 academic year, India has 80,291 postgraduate medical seats. Of the 31,215 seats available in the third round of counselling, as many as 17,623 remained vacant. In addition, 11,837 ‘virtual’ seats created due to upgradation also went unfilled, even after 135 new seats were added. Traditionally, postgraduate medical admissions have been intensely competitive. This year’s unprecedented vacancies, however, prompted the Medical Counselling Committee to relax eligibility norms for the third round.

As a result, the cut-off for the general category has been lowered from the 50th percentile to the 7th percentile, while for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes it has been reduced to zero percentile — effectively allowing candidates with minus 40 marks to qualify. Given that the NEET-PG examination follows a negative marking system, even candidates with negative scores out of 800 can now become eligible for admission.

This decision is as startling as it is risky. Allowing candidates who have effectively failed the examination to enter postgraduate medical programmes raises serious concerns about academic standards and, more critically, about the quality of future patient care. Medical professionals across the country have flagged precisely this issue. The government must now decide whether it wishes to produce merely degree-holding doctors or invest in building a healthcare system strengthened by rigorously trained specialists.

The controversy also demands a more uncomfortable introspection: why did the system reach a point where such drastic dilution of cut-offs appeared necessary? The answer lies less with the students and more with structural deficiencies in medical education.

In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and the acute shortage of medical manpower it exposed, the Union government accelerated the expansion of medAical seats across the country. However, this expansion has not been matched by a commensurate investment in faculty strength and infrastructure

Maharashtra, often considered among the better-performing states, offers a telling example. Of its 25 government medical colleges, 10 have less than 50 per cent of the required teaching staff. At the newly established Ratnagiri Government Medical College, faculty availability stands at just 11.76 per cent of NMC norms, with not a single department having a professor. According to a report by the Maharashtra University of Health Sciences, not a single new teacher has been appointed across 25 medical colleges. The NMC has also issued show-cause notices to several states, including Tamil Nadu, over inadequate faculty strength.

Such shortages inevitably place an excessive burden on existing faculty, directly affecting the quality of training. If this is the condition at the undergraduate level, it is hardly surprising that students struggle to meet minimum benchmarks in postgraduate entrance examinations. When the source itself is depleted, the outcome is bound to reflect that deficit. Seen in this light, vacant postgraduate seats are not an aberration but a symptom of deeper systemic neglect — and a warning about how much quality has already been compromised in undergraduate medical education.

The issue is now under judicial scrutiny, with a public interest litigation challenging the relaxation of NEET-PG cut-offs. The petition argues that the very purpose of the exam — introduced to curb donation-based admissions and ensure merit-driven selection — has been undermined. Medical associations have echoed this concern, warning that short-term administrative fixes could have long-term consequences for healthcare delivery.

At stake is more than the fate of a single admission cycle. The government’s response will signal whether India intends to protect the integrity of postgraduate medical education and strengthen its healthcare workforce, or whether it is willing to trade standards for numbers. The future credibility of Indian medical education may well hinge on that choice.

(The writer is a senior journalist based in Kolhapur. Views personal.)