Bengaluru: In response to the Medical Counselling Committee’s (MCC) recent decision to fully erase the qualifying percentile for NEET PG, the Karnataka High Court has issued a formal summons to the Central government. Hubballi attorney Dr. Vinod Kulkarni was fast to contest this unusual verdict. These summonses have been issued by the division bench, which is chaired by Chief Justice Prasanna B. Varale and Justice Krishna S. Dixit, to the relevant parties, such as the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry, the MCC, and others.
The MCC, which is in charge of distributing seats for post-graduate medical education through the NEET PG examination, made the somewhat astounding statement that the eligibility threshold for the open seats this year would be placed at zero percentile. Since the NEET PG exam replaced the MCAT as the main medical admission examination in 2017, this is the first case where the eligibility threshold has been completely eliminated.
According to sources, there are presently more than 13,000 open seats at medical universities around the nation, even after two rounds of counseling. In this instance, the petitioner emphasized that the NEET PG test had a minimum percentile criterion of 50% for ten years. On September 20, 2023, a notification indicating the elimination of this 50% criterion was released.
Following the MCC’s ruling, any student who took part in the NEET PG can now reserve the seat of their choice. Concerns have been expressed regarding the possibility that the country may start producing doctors in large quantities, undercutting the idea of merit-based admittance, a point that the Supreme Court has often stressed in relation to entrance exams for post-graduate medical programs.
The petitioner has sought the court to overturn the MCC’s ruling and reinstate the old 50% cut-off criteria for NEET PG exams, highlighting the importance of achieving at least 50% in these tests.
