The Delhi High Court on Wednesday rejected a public interest litigation (PIL) challenging the government’s decision to drastically reduce the qualifying cut-off marks for NEET PG 2025 admissions, holding that the aim of postgraduate medical education is to develop further skills in doctors and not to determine their competence.
A bench of Chief Justice D K Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia observed that the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test for Postgraduate (NEET PG) is only a mechanism to sort MBBS graduates for admission into specialty courses. It is not an indicator of the overall quality or competency of a medical graduate.
“The only argument we can gather is that lowering the cut-off marks will send MBBS doctors with less competence to pursue postgraduate courses,” the bench noted. “But what is the purpose of granting higher education? It is to make them more skilled in an area. This exam does not ipso facto judge the quality of a doctor.”
The petitioner had contended that reducing the cut-off percentile to such an extent would allow underqualified candidates to enter specialized medical training, thereby endangering public health.
However, the court disagreed, stating that doctors already qualified to practice medicine are being given an opportunity to pursue further studies and that allowing PG medical seats to remain vacant would not serve the public interest.
“Will it be in public interest to leave the seats vacant? No, we will not permit,” the court remarked.
The counsel for the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS) and other authorities defended the decision, citing that it was in accordance with existing regulations, which allow for a cut-off reduction to fill vacant seats in a particular academic year.
They informed the court that after the second round of counselling, thousands of seats remained vacant across the country. By reducing the qualifying percentiles, more candidates would be eligible to fill up streams that are generally less preferred.
It was also stated that the third round of counselling was already underway under the revised criteria, and a similar challenge to the cut-off reduction was pending before the Supreme Court, although it had not yet been listed for hearing.
Earlier this month, NBEMS reduced the NEET PG 2025-26 qualifying percentiles across all categories. For general category candidates, the cut-off was lowered from 50 percentile to just 7 percentile. For reserved categories, it was brought down to zero, meaning even candidates who scored negative marks (as low as -40 out of 800) became eligible for admission in the third counselling round.
The move came amid reports that more than 18,000 postgraduate medical seats remained unfilled nationwide.
The High Court concluded that it saw no merit in the PIL and upheld the policy decision, reiterating that the NEET PG is a sorting exam and not a final test of merit or capability. It emphasized the larger goal of ensuring that postgraduate medical seats are not wasted in a country where there is already a significant demand for specialists.
