Over 18,000 PG medical seats vacant after NEET-PG Round-2, authorities to lower qualifying percentile

More than 18,000 postgraduate medical seats remained vacant across the country even after the second round of NEET-PG counselling, prompting authorities to step in to prevent what officials described as a waste of national medical education resources.

Health ministry sources said the scale of the shortfall was significant and spread across both government and private institutions. “It is submitted that after completion of Round–2 of NEET-PG counselling, a substantial number of PG medical seats (more than 18,000) across various States, and Government Medical Colleges, and Private Medical Colleges are still lying vacant,” the sources told ANI.

The vacancies, officials said, ran counter to the core purpose of NEET-PG and its counselling framework, which is designed to ensure optimal utilisation of postgraduate medical seats, expand the pool of trained specialists, and address the country’s shortage of medical professionals. Leaving seats unfilled, they added, undermines this objective and leads to avoidable wastage of capacity.

Officials underlined that every NEET-PG candidate is already a qualified MBBS graduate who has completed a recognised medical degree and internship. The examination, they said, exists to rank these doctors through a transparent, merit-based system, allowing counselling authorities to allocate seats according to rank and candidate preference.

According to the authorities, the persistence of vacancies was not due to a lack of eligible or capable doctors. “The non-filling of seats is therefore not on account of lack of eligibility or competence, but due to the existing qualifying percentile criteria, which has restricted the available pool of eligible candidates despite the presence of numerous vacant seats,” they said.

To address this, the qualifying percentile for NEET-PG admissions was lowered, a move aimed at expanding the pool of eligible candidates and facilitating the filling of vacant seats. Officials stressed that this step does not dilute academic standards but enables already-qualified MBBS doctors to compete for available seats.

At the same time, authorities said safeguards remain firmly in place to preserve merit and transparency. Admissions will continue to be made strictly on the basis of NEET-PG merit and rank, with seat allotment carried out only through designated counselling authorities. Candidates will be allotted seats according to inter-se merit and preferences exercised, and no direct, discretionary, or institutional-level admissions will be allowed outside the counselling process.

The health ministry said similar measures have been adopted in previous academic years when large numbers of seats remained vacant, and that the approach has proven effective in preventing seat wastage while maintaining academic standards across postgraduate medical education.