Health Ministry approves reduction of cut off by 15 percentile to fill vacant PG seats

New Delhi: The Union health ministry has approved the reduction of cut off by 15 percentile, across all categories for the NEET PG exam.

In an official communication to the National Board of Examinations, the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) has said that it has been decided by the health ministry to reduce the cut off by 15 percentile across all categories.

"After due discussion and deliberations, it has been decided by the MoHFW in consultation with NMC with prior approval from HFM to reduce the cut-off by 15 percentile across all categories i.e. the qualifying percentile for general category may be reduced to 35th percentile, for PH(Genl) to 30th percentile and for reserved category (SC/ST/OBC) be reduced to 25th percentile," said the MCC's letter to the NBE with the name of Dr B Srinivas, ADG (ME) and member secretary MCC.

Welcoming the government step, Dr Rohan Krishnan, President of the Federation of All India Medical Association (FAIMA) Doctors Association, said that the cut off has been reduced to 15 percentile for all categories which is a good step.

"The examination was delayed twice due to Covid and the counselling process was also delayed due to the pandemic and court cases. This is the admission of 2021 batch which is taking place in 2022 due to delay. Still around 6,500 seats are vacant so we were expecting such steps from the government," he said.

Talking about the impact the cut off reduction would have on the students, he said: "Reducing the cut off does not mean reducing the merit criteria any way."