To fill up vacant seats, Centre orders reducing NEET-PG cutoff by 15 percentile

To fill up vacant postgraduate medical seats, the Union Health Ministry has directed the National Board of Examinations to reduce the cut-off by 15 percentile across all categories for NEET-PG 2021. In a letter to NBE Executive Director Minu Bajpai, Member Secretary of the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) B Srinivas said, "After due discussion and deliberations, it has been decided by the Health Ministry in consultation with NMC 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."

"In view of the above, you are requested to kindly declare the revised result and send the revised result data of the newly eligible candidates to the office of the undersigned at the earliest," Srinivas said.

According to health ministry officials, the decision was taken in consultation with the National Medical Commission (NMC) in view of approximately 8,000 seats still remaining vacant even after two rounds of all India and two rounds of state quota counselling.


"The move aims to prevent seat wastage. With this reduction in percentile approximately 25,000 fresh candidates can participate in the mop round of the ongoing counselling," an official said.

The National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Postgraduate), or NEET-PG, is conducted for admission to postgraduate medical courses.