‘Relaxing Cut-offs Has Happened Before, It’s Not Truly One-time’
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As the debate over lowered qualifying percentiles in NEET-PG gathers pace, questions are being raised about academic standards, vacant postgraduate seats and the long-term impact on medical education in India. From a “minus 40” benchmark to the broader implications for merit, private medical colleges and the proposed National Exit Test (NExT), the issue has reached the Supreme Court and triggered sharp reactions within the medical community.
Parijaat Mishra, Career Counsellor for Medical Entrance Exams at ALLEN Career Institute, Kota, shares his perspective on the controversy, its implications for aspiring doctors, and what it means for the future of medical education in the country.
How can a raw score of -40 effectively serve as a qualifying benchmark for a profession that deals directly with human life and safety?
Minus 40 / 800 marks are basically applicable for the reserved category (OBC, NCL, SC and ST), for the general, it’s 103/ 800
Now, as per the Health Ministry, the vacant seats must be filled in any case so that precious post-graduate seats must not be wasted (lowering of % tile is a remedial action ), and as such candidate with lower marks are now eligible for counselling, thereby allotment of seats too.
The government claims this reduction is a “one-time measure” to fill 18,000 vacant seats; do you believe this sets a dangerous legal precedent for future academic standards?
The health ministry in previous years also relaxed the minimum qualifying cutoff from 2017- 2025, mainly due to non-filling of preclinical and paraclinical PG seats. One-time measure is not happening in today’s scenario, but it happened in the past years too.
In your classroom experience, how does a “Zero Percentile” eligibility impact the teaching rigour when students with vastly different foundational knowledge are grouped?
Academic standards are compromised, and hence knowledge as well as the quality of medical professionals might not be at par with those who have scored quite well in entrance examination but are not able to get allotment because of high-fee-priced good-branch clinical seats ( Radiodiagnosis,Gen Medicine, Dermatology,Obg ,Paeds Opthalmology Surgery and many more in private medical colleges and deemed universities
If a candidate with negative marks can qualify for PG, does the NEET PG exam lose its status as a “competitive entrance” and become a mere administrative formality?
Indeed, scoring a negative mark and then providing a seat is just a formality of the examination. Suppose a particular candidate was absent on the entrance exam day for whatever genuine reasons and is not eligible to secure a seat (consider he might be scoring good marks if he appeared at the entrance examination). On the contrary, candidates with lower percentile (negative marks) are being allotted seats because they can pay high end fee of pvt medical colleges as well as deemed universities.
Do you agree with the petitioners in the Supreme Court who argue that this move primarily benefits private medical colleges struggling to fill high-fee seats?
Medical PG clinical branches are always superior to non-clinical branches because of practice and monetary issues, and SELF SATISFACTION for what medical professionals aim for (it’s a hard journey of 5.5 years, sometimes one or two attempts more too additionally)
Does Allen foresee a future where the NExT (National Exit Test) will have to be exceptionally difficult to “filter out” candidates who entered via these lowered standards?
Next was a welcome but not accepted by prospective medicos in past years, it was designed as a standardised examination for medical undergraduates and focus more on clinical skills rather than traditional theory-based examination. The world is changing fast in such a scenario medical professional must be updated with skill based practical education. The health ministry must involve students, associations, and renowned medical professionals to design a unanimously accepted curriculum for NExT which not only help in standardization of medical education but also application skill-based knowledge among medical students.
What is your response to the Supreme Court’s recent observation that a “minus 40” benchmark is a matter of serious concern for the integrity of medical education?
Lowering of percentile in India might be a suspicious alarm for medical and health care professionals in the world who actually believe that Indian medical graduates are nicely trained (academically in college classrooms and clinically in hospitals)
Does this policy risk the global reputation of Indian MD/MS degrees when external medical boards evaluate our “qualifying” criteria?”
Indian medical graduates and professionals are the best in the world.
1- They are selected rankwise among a large number of appearing candidates through NEET UG, the largest examination of India for medical college admission (Appx 23 lakh students for 1.29 lakh govt and pvt MBBS seats in medical colleges)
2- High-end tough curriculum, good clinical exposure and trained by senior medical teachers in a medical college.
