A postgraduate medical seat being allotted to a candidate who scored just 9 out of 800 in the NEET PG entrance exam has triggered fresh concerns about the credibility of India’s medical education admission system and the growing influence of non-merit routes.
In a development that many doctors’ groups have called alarming, the candidate became the last person to receive a PG seat in a private medical college under the management quota for the 2025–26 academic session during the third round of counselling conducted by the Tamil Nadu state selection committee.
The case has once again highlighted what critics describe as a disturbing dilution of standards in postgraduate medical training, where the priority appears to be filling seats rather than ensuring competence.
Admission into PG medical courses is officially meant to be based on merit through NEET PG, a competitive computer-based test comprising 200 multiple-choice questions, with each correct answer carrying four marks and a negative marking of one for wrong responses.
However, recent decisions by authorities have raised doubts about whether merit still remains the cornerstone of medical education.
Earlier, the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences sharply lowered the qualifying cut-off for the 2025–26 session to 103 marks out of 800. For SC, ST and OBC candidates, the qualifying score was reportedly reduced to -40 out of 800, an unprecedented move aimed at filling more than 9,000 vacant PG seats.
While the intention may have been to address vacancies, the outcome has been a system where even candidates with extremely low or negative scores are entering specialised medical programmes.
Medical associations such as the Indian Medical Association (IMA) and senior doctors have warned that such admissions set a dangerous precedent.
If postgraduate medical seats are being offered to candidates scoring single digits, it raises a serious question: what happens to the quality of doctors being trained to treat patients in critical specialties?
Healthcare is not an industry where standards can be compromised for convenience. Lowering benchmarks so drastically may solve the problem of vacant seats on paper, but it risks creating a long-term crisis of poorly trained specialists.
The state counselling results also revealed how far cut-offs have fallen across quotas.
Under the government quota, a student with just 42 marks secured admission in MD Community Medicine at Sri Muthukumaran Medical College in Chennai. Another candidate with 71 marks was allotted MD Forensic Medicine at Srinivasan Medical College and Hospital in Samayapuram.
Even under the service quota, meant for doctors working in government hospitals, the cut-off was only 87 marks for MS Orthopaedics at ESI Medical College, Chennai.
Officials confirmed that seven candidates with scores below 100 received PG seats.
The steepest fall was seen in the management quota, where the lowest cut-off went down to 9 marks for MD Pharmacology at Dhanalakshmi Srinivasan Medical College in Perambalur.
At the same institution, another candidate with 25 marks obtained a seat in MD Community Medicine.
In total, at least 21 doctors scoring below 100 marks were allotted postgraduate seats under the management quota.
Such figures underline the extent to which postgraduate medical education is becoming vulnerable to commercialisation, where the ability to pay may be outweighing academic preparedness.
It is important to note that the candidate is not necessarily to blame. The larger responsibility lies with a system that allows such outcomes.
The real failure is institutional: regulators and policymakers appear more focused on filling seats than protecting the integrity of medical training.
If thousands of seats remain vacant year after year, the solution cannot simply be to lower cut-offs to absurd levels. Instead, authorities must address why seats are going unfilled—whether due to high fees, poor infrastructure, uneven distribution of colleges, or lack of trust in private institutions.
Officials have indicated that if the 1,902 doctors allotted seats under the government quota and 643 students allotted seats under the management quota do not join, cut-offs could drop even further in the next counselling round.
That possibility should worry not just doctors, but every citizen, because the quality of future specialists directly affects patient safety.
India’s medical education system is already under pressure from staff shortages and uneven healthcare delivery. Diluting postgraduate standards may create a much bigger crisis than vacant seats ever could.
Also Read: NEET 2024: SC Raises Concerns; Says Didn’t Cancel Exam As There Was No Systematic Breach https://www.vibesofindia.com/neet-2024-sc-raises-concerns-says-didnt-cancel-exam-as-there-was-no-systematic-breach/
