NEET-PG cut-offs reduced to zero percentile in 2023, raising concerns over medical graduate quality in India

NEET-PG aspirants arrive at an examination centre to appear for the medical entrance exam on August 30

NEW DELHI: The National Board of Examinations (NBE) has ruled out lowering the pass percentage for foreign medical graduates (FMGs), saying that “qualifying standards cannot be diluted”. However, when it comes to NEET-PG, the centralised entrance exam taken by almost all Indian medical graduates, the qualifying cut-off has been significantly reduced over the past five years. In NEET PG, percentile cut-off is used, whereas to qualify in FMGE,candidates have to score 50%. The initial cut-off for NEET PG in each of these years has been 50th percentile for the general category, which has been equivalent to roughly 35% marks, and 40th percentile for reserved category, equivalent to about 30%. However, for the sake of filling vacant seats, the cut-off percentile has been reduced every year. It was dropped to zero percentile in 2023 for all categories, which meant that everyone who wrote the exam was deemed qualified including those with negative marks. In 2024, it was dropped to 5th percentile for all, but the equivalent percentage score cannot be calculated because the data on marks was not made public that year. If 50% marks was the cut off for NEET PG, only about 25% of those who appeared would have qualified in the last five years. The proposed single licensing-cum-entrance exam for post graduate seats in India, which would be common for FMGs and for Indian medical graduates, called National Exit Test or NExT, has been postponed indefinitely. NEET PG results raise the question: What share of Indian graduates would be able to qualify in such an exam with 50% and not 50th percentile as the qualifying cut off ? NBE points out that the difference between the FMG screening test and NEET PG is that one is for qualifying to get a licence to practise while NEET PG exam is to rank Indian medical graduates, who have already passed final year MBBS exams, for getting post-graduate seats. Final year MBBS exams are held in the medical colleges where the students have been taught and trained with the inherent vulnerability of institutional bias to boost pass percentages. FMGE was introduced in 2002 by the erstwhile Medical Council of India ostensibly to ensure that doctors trained abroad meet the same standards as those trained in India.

NEET-PG cut-offs and the share of candidates qualifying after revised cut-offs from 2020 to 2025

The 2002 regulation also made it mandatory for FMGs to complete one-year internship from an institution approved by the MCI after clearing FMGE to get a licence to practise. From Nov 2021, the National Medical Commission, which succeeded the MCI, has mandated that all FMGs, after passing the final year MBBS exam in whichever country have they trained in, have to obtain a licence to practise in that country before they appear for FMGE. While the criteria for an FMG to get a licence to practice in India has been progressively tightened, the opposite has been happening to medical education in India. The infrastructure and faculty norms, and the regulatory oversight for starting new medical colleges in India has been progressively relaxed or diluted to help rapid expansion of MBBS seats. Between 2014 and 2026, the number of medical colleges has jumped from 387 to 818 and the number of MBBS seats from over 51,300 to about 1.3 lakh with complaints piling up of colleges being run without adequate faculty, infrastructure or patient load.

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Though every candidate appearing for NEET PG is supposed to have passed MBBS with minimum 40% in each subject and 50% overall, candidates scoring single digit, zero or even negative marks in NEET PG puts a question mark over the quality of graduates being churned out from medical colleges in India. It also raises the question, can India have different criteria/double standards for screening FMGs and its own medical graduates given the highly uneven standards of medical education here.

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