13 students with negative scores eligible for PG medical seats

Students with negative marks and zero marks in NEET (PG) are eligible for admission to medical PG courses in India, raising concerns about the quality of education. Students with as low as 5 marks have secured admission to medical colleges. Experts are urging the government to maintain higher eligibility criteria to ensure the quality of doctors in the healthcare sector.

Mumbai: Thirteen students who secured negative marks and 14 candidates with zero marks in NEET (PG), the qualifying examination for post-graduate medical education, will be eligible for admission to medical PG courses in the country. Alarmed education experts have raised concerns and urged the government to maintain the quality of education.

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A student who secured five marks in NEET PG successfully secured admission to a Delhi-based medical college for a Doctor of (Forensic) Medicine degree in the all-India quota. Students with 10 marks in NEET have secured admission to PG third-round colleges in Tamil Nadu and Haryana. Most of these admissions were facilitated through the management quota.

Individuals with lower scores have become eligible for admission even in the National Quota and the Quota for Non-Resident Indian Students. Notably, students with only 11 marks in the NRI quota secured admission to MD Pharmacy seats at an Ambala-based medical college.

The situation has come to light following the recent release of the third-round admission list, coinciding with the implementation of the zero percentile criterion mandated by the union health ministry. The medical counselling committee operating under the ministry recently did away with the previous cut-off scores of 291 marks for the general category and 257 marks for reserved categories.

The dean of a Navi Mumbai-based private medical college attempted to justify the government’s reduction of eligibility terms. “The relaxation of eligibility criteria had raised expectations that students with lower scores would have a better chance at admission to these programmes,” he said. “Subjects such as anatomy, biochemistry, forensics, microbiology, preventive and social medicine, pharmacology and physiology have anyway had more vacant seats.” Worried education experts, however, said that this year has seen students with scores ranging from 50 to 60 securing seats even in specialised fields like gynaecology and anaesthesiology.

“The government’s decision is unjust to students who studied hard to secure good scores in NEET-PG,” said Sudha Shenoy, a medical education counsellor. “After this decision, around 700 students applied for the NRI quota and around 390 secured admissions in the third round.” Shenoy has filed a petition in the Supreme Court of India on this issue.

Taking Shenoy’s point further, Brijesh Sutaria, a parent, said, “We are still awaiting the state allotment list. In this list too, we will surely see students with low scores secure admission in better courses, which is extremely unjust to the ones who get good scores. The government must reconsider this decision and allow only good talent to serve in the public health sector.”