New Delhi: Even as India faces an acute shortage of specialist doctors, thousands of postgraduate (PG) medical seats remain vacant year after year. To address this, authorities have successively lowered the qualifying cut-offs for NEET-PG, the latest revision allowing candidates with scores of negative 40 in some categories to become eligible for the third round of NEET PG counselling.
The move has once again triggered debate within the medical community, raising questions about seat distribution, affordability, quality of training and the long-term impact on healthcare.
Why Are PG Seats Going Empty Despite High Demand?
Medical associations and experts say the vacancies are not due to lack of aspirants, but structural issues within postgraduate medical education.
Dr Rohan Krishnan, Chief Patron of the Federation of All India Medical Associations (FAIMA), describes the situation as a policy failure.
"The phenomenon of thousands of postgraduate medical seats lying vacant despite an acute doctor shortage in India is a policy failure, not a student failure," Dr Krishnan said.
According to doctors' bodies, more than half of the vacant PG seats are in private medical colleges, where fees for MD and MS courses can range from Rs 25 lakh to over Rs 1 crore, and even higher for DNB and super-specialty programmes.
India currently has over 67,000 PG medical seats (MD, MS and diploma combined). Since 2014, the government says it has added over 20,000 PG seats, a significant expansion aimed at addressing specialist shortages.
Despite this, around 18,000 PG seats were reported vacant nationwide, according to counselling authorities.
A majority of these vacant seats are in private medical colleges and in non-clinical or less preferred specialties.
Doctors believe that India does not suffer from a lack of aspiring doctors, it suffers from a lack of affordable, equitable and rationally distributed postgraduate training seats. "For an average middle-class doctor, this debt is impossible to repay. Many drop out of counselling or wait only for government seats instead of entering lifelong financial slavery", Dr Krishnan noted.
Apart from cost, other deterrents include poor infrastructure, inconsistent stipend payments, location in underserved districts, and limited clinical exposure, particularly in newer private colleges and some recently established government institutions.
Why NEET-PG Cut-Offs Keep lowering?
This is not the first time that percentile relaxations have been used to address the vacancies issue. In 2023, zero percentile was implemented for all categories, in 2024, it was brought to 5th percentile for all and for 2025, that is the current NEET PG cycle, graded revisions have been made as follows:
General / EWS: from 276 to 103/800
General PwBD: from 255 to 90/800
SC/ST/OBC: from 235 to -40/800
Dr Krishnan says repeated cut-off reductions reflect deeper systemic problems. "Repeated reduction in cut-offs is a desperate corrective measure to compensate for systemic failures," he said adding that "instead of fixing seat distribution, fee regulation and irrational bonding policies, authorities are artificially diluting eligibility thresholds merely to avoid the embarrassment of empty seats."
The 'Minus 40 Marks' Debacle
The latest cut-off revision has sharpened focus on academic standards, particularly the optics of allowing candidates with negative scores to enter postgraduate counselling.
Dr Aqsa Shaikh, Professor at Jamia Hamdard Medical College, said the issue exposes gaps in the medical education pipeline. "It is interesting to note that someone adequately trained in medicine, who scored over 50 percent in MBBS, can get zero or negative marks in an entrance exam. That speaks to the quality of MBBS education and assessment," she said.
She also pointed to commercial pressures. "The cut-offs are being decreased to fill vacant seats, driven by pressures from private medical colleges, for whom PG admissions are lucrative," Dr Shaikh said.
"This cut-off slashing is a band-aid to the cancer affecting the medical education system. It will not help in the long run."
What Aspirants Are Saying?
Several NEET-PG aspirants expressed mixed emotions over the cut-off revision.
A final-year MBBS graduate from Maharashtra, requesting anonymity, said the decision felt unfair. "I spent two years preparing seriously and missed the earlier cut-off by a small margin. Now someone with a negative score can sit in counselling. It makes you question what merit means."
Another aspirant from Uttar Pradesh said financial realities, not marks, are the real barrier. "Even if I qualify now, I cannot afford a private seat that costs Rs 80 lakh. Lowering cut-offs doesn't solve that problem."
A third candidate, who has appeared for NEET-PG twice, said the policy reflects desperation. "This feels like they are fixing numbers, not the system. Seats are vacant because people don't trust the quality or can't afford them."
Concerns Over Long-Term Impact
Doctors warn that lowering eligibility thresholds may have consequences beyond admissions.
"Lowering cut-offs may increase admissions temporarily, but it risks erosion of academic standards," Dr Krishnan said.
Dr Shaikh echoed similar concerns. "This will lead to a spiral of quality distribution, doctors with poor knowledge entering PG and poor-quality specialists coming out," she said. "Will they pass MD or MS exams? In most private colleges, yes, because failure rates are close to zero. This becomes almost like buying a degree, not education."
What Doctors Say Needs To Change
Instead of repeated cut-off reductions, doctors' groups have called for structural reforms, including stricter fee regulation in private colleges, expansion of government PG seats in underserved states, uniform bonding policies, and affordable financing options for postgraduate education.
"Doctors are not rejecting postgraduate education, they are rejecting a system that has become economically violent and academically compromised", Dr Krishnan said.
As counselling progresses under the revised eligibility criteria, the larger question remains unresolved: whether filling seats at any cost addresses India's healthcare needs or merely postpones deeper reform of medical education.
