The NEET PG 2025 cut-off revision has ignited an intense debate within India’s medical community, raising serious questions about merit, competency, and patient safety. The National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS) reduced qualifying percentiles dramatically: unreserved candidates now qualify above the 7th percentile, while reserved category applicants are considered qualified regardless of scores. This has led to candidates with extremely low marks—sometimes single- or double-digit scores—being admitted into critical clinical specialties like General Surgery, Obstetrics & Gynaecology, and Orthopaedics.
Medical experts and associations warn that admitting candidates with such low scores into high-risk fields may compromise training quality and patient safety, potentially eroding public trust in healthcare. While the government argues that the move is necessary to fill nearly 10,000 unoccupied postgraduate seats nationwide, critics emphasize that long-term reforms—such as better undergraduate training, equitable distribution of medical colleges, and workforce planning—are more sustainable solutions than drastically lowering cut-offs.
The controversy highlights a tension between preventing seat wastage and maintaining rigorous medical standards. Without careful balancing, India risks producing specialists in name but not in competence, threatening both healthcare quality and the credibility of its medical education system.
