New Delhi: With more than 18,000 postgraduate medical posts lying vacant and hospitals facing a shortage of specialists, the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS) has decided to prevent costly wastage of training capacity. After the second round of NEET-PG 2025 counseling for seats sought by qualified doctors, the regulator has “significantly” lowered the cut-offs to ensure that thousands of seats in 541 government and private medical colleges are filled, according to two officials familiar with the decision.
The range of cutoff reductions announced on Wednesday is large. “To ensure that these seats do not remain vacant, the eligibility percentile for the Unreserved (UR) category has been reduced from 50 to 7, while for SC, ST and OBC (Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes) categories, it has been reduced from 40 to zero,” said a third official.
This official also said that this is not the first time that such measures have been taken to deal with vacancies. “Last year the percentile was reduced to 5 (for the unreserved category), in previous years it was even reduced to zero so that there were no vacancies,” he added.
With the current zero percentile cutoff for reserved categories, now every student who has appeared in the exam is actually eligible for the counseling process.
Distribution of Merit
Allotment will continue through authorized, transparent counseling mechanisms based on NEET-PG ranks and candidates’ preferences, with no provision for direct or discretionary admissions, officials said.
“Leaving such a huge number. vacancies undermine national efforts to improve health care delivery and lead to the loss of valuable educational resources,” said the first official cited above, requesting anonymity.
The revision reflects a pragmatic approach to health human resource management and ensures that the country’s medical school infrastructure is fully utilized to meet the growing demand for specialized care..
This decision follows the conclusion of the second round of counseling which revealed the range of vacancies. By revising the thresholds, the government wants to provide an opportunity for more doctors to participate in the remaining rounds of counseling and secure specialization.
Officials said the measure does not indicate a dilution of academic standards. They emphasized that all the NEET-PG candidates are already MBBS qualified doctors who have completed compulsory internships.
“The entrance exam serves as an evaluation mechanism for already qualified doctors to facilitate transparent allotment based on merit,” the first official said, adding that the previous limits had inadvertently restricted the pool of eligible candidates even though there were vacancies.
The decision followed a formal request by the Indian Medical Association (IMA) on 12 January 2026 citing an urgent need to prevent wastage of seats and strengthen health services. A subsequent notice to reduce the limits was issued on January 13.
Dr. Dilip Bhanushali, President, IMA, said, “This move is in line with previous academic years where similar arrangements have proven effective in ensuring seat utilization while maintaining academic integrity. This move is aimed at strengthening the nation’s healthcare system through a fair, merit-based process.”
Officials said that despite the reduction in cut-offs, admissions remain strictly merit-based and selection-based seat allocation will continue to govern the distribution of seats in medical institutions.
Emailed inquiries to a spokesperson for the Department of Health remained unanswered as of press time.
