NEET PG percentile slashed so seats don’t go vacant; may open doors to seat sale racket Premium

MoHFW lowers NEET PG counselling percentile to fill vacant seats, sparking debate on medical education quality and corruption.

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) has lowered the NEET PG counselling 2024 percentile. The move aims to ensure seats don’t go vacant in the ongoing counselling process. Most of the vacant seats are from pre-clinical and para-clinical branches like Biochemistry, Anatomy, and others. Experts say providing better paying jobs to candidates emerging from these branches could help resolve the issue.

From the General/EWS category, candidates with 15 percentile and above will be eligible to participate in counselling. From the SC/ST/OBC/ PwD category, candidates with 10 percentile and above will be eligible to participate in counselling. At the start of counselling, the qualifying percentile for General/EWS candidates was 50 percentile. It was 40 percentile for SC/ST/OBC/ PwD category.

According to Dr. Pravin H. Shingare, Former Director of Medical Education and Research, Maharashtra State, Mumbai, says approximately 80% of the seats of pre-clinical and para-clinical branches like Anatomy, Physiology, Microbiology, Forensic Medicine, Community Medicine remain vacant every year. He says studying these branches leads to job roles like performing autopsy examinations, biochemical tests, blood and urine tests, and so on. They also open up opportunities in the pharmacy industry and teaching space. “MBBS graduates are not keenly pursuing these branches as the courses and the careers they will embark upon rarely come with patient exposure to which they are inclined.”

Dr. Dhruv Chauhan, National Council Member, Indian Medical Association: Junior Doctors’ Network (IMA-JDN), says pursuing these branches makes MBBS students feel on the same threshold as BSc graduates since there is little to distinguish between them and other graduates performing similar roles at work. Although only MBBS graduates can do these PG courses, they don’t choose to opt for these branches. “But that is only one aspect of it. These branches don’t offer any patient exposure and the payscale is not good, so the seats remain vacant”, he said.

Dr. Shingare says this decision to increase the qualifying criteria by reducing the percentile is not new. A lot of candidates who take the exam do not qualify. Students who don’t get any seats when the admission process is concluding will be willing to take the vacant ones if provided with an opportunity. “As you take qualifying criteria down you open up opportunities for them. These experiments are done every year. So last year the qualifying percentile was made zero”, he said. 

Dr. Shingare says the NEET PG exam was introduced in 2013, before that there were no qualifying criteria for studying PG in India. He says this decision to take the qualifying criteria down could be soon applied to super speciality courses as well, which are studied after PG. “Any student who cleared MBBS was qualified to apply for PG education. Since this exam came, that has changed. Does that mean the way we functioned for the last 75 years was wrong?” he said.  

Dr. Chauhan adds a note of caution, however. He says that reducing the percentile creates a loophole for private medical colleges to sell their seats for crores of rupees. “During counselling, some students block seats in clinical branches after a round but don’t join, leaving the seats vacant in subsequently. When the percentile is reduced, these seats that are in demand can be illegally sold to candidates with as little as 10 percentile for a hefty sum. In effect, you are downgrading merit in exchange for money that is the intent behind NEET”, he said.