NEET PG: Health ministry lowers qualifying percentile to fill over 18,000 vacant seats

More than 18,000 postgraduate medical seats remained vacant across government and private colleges after Round 2 of NEET PG counseling, prompting authorities to intervene to prevent continued underutilization of medical education capacity.

Health ministry sources said the scale of unfilled seats remained a concern even after multiple rounds of allotment.

“It is submitted that after completion of Round 2 of NEET-PG counselling, a substantial number of PG medical seats (more than 18,000) across various states, government medical colleges, and private medical colleges are still lying vacant,” officials noted.

The situation has highlighted ongoing challenges in ensuring full use of available postgraduate training opportunities.

Authorities said the purpose of NEET PG and its centralized counseling process is to maximize seat utilization, expand the pool of trained specialists, and address shortages in the healthcare workforce.

Vacant seats, they added, undermine these objectives and result in the loss of valuable national resources.

All NEET PG candidates are qualified MBBS graduates who have completed recognized degrees and mandatory internships.

The entrance examination ranks candidates to enable transparent, merit-based allocation of seats through a centralized counseling mechanism, ensuring admissions are made according to rank and individual preferences.

Officials clarified that the vacancies were not due to a shortage of eligible or capable candidates.

“The non-filling of seats is therefore not on account of lack of eligibility or competence, but due to the existing qualifying percentile criteria, which has restricted the available pool of eligible candidates despite the presence of numerous vacant seats,” they said.

To address the issue, authorities decided to lower the qualifying percentile, thereby expanding the pool of eligible candidates and enabling more seats to be filled.

The health ministry stressed that merit and transparency would remain central to the admission process. Admissions will continue to be based strictly on NEET PG rank, with seat allotment carried out only through authorized counseling bodies.

Candidates will be assigned seats according to inter se merit and preferences exercised, and no direct or institutional-level admissions will be allowed outside the counseling framework.

Officials said the reduction in the qualifying percentile does not dilute academic standards but allows already qualified doctors to compete for available seats.

Similar measures adopted in previous years under comparable circumstances have helped prevent seat wastage while maintaining academic rigor.