New Delhi: While hearing a PIL challenging the sharp reduction in qualifying cut-off percentiles for NEET PG 2025, the Supreme Court of India held that the issue of lowering cut-offs keeps repeating every year and needs a permanent institutional mechanism rather than a temporary solution.

Observing that ongoing counselling, delayed academic sessions, and last-minute changes create problems for candidates, the Division Bench comprising Justice P S Narasimha and Justice Alok Aradhe suggested that the government consider constituting a committee to conduct an audit of performance and examine why the issue arises year after year.

In addition to this, the apex court asked the Centre and the Ministry to create a working institution to examine why the problems are repeating and arrive at solutions, along with a mechanism for enforcement.

The plea before the court challenges a January 13, 2026, notice issued by the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS), which reduced qualifying percentiles in the third round of NEET-PG 2025-26 counselling.

Medical Dialogues had reported that NBE, in a notice dated 13.01.2026, reduced the minimum qualifying percentile cut-off for counselling of the third round of National Eligibility-Entrance Test Postgraduate (NEET-PG) 2025-2026 for various categories of candidates.

As per the revised qualifying percentiles for NEET-PG 2025, for the academic session 2025-2026, for the General/EWS, General PwBD, SC/ST/OBC (Including PwBD of SC/ST/OBC) categories, the revised qualifying cut-off is 7th, 5th, and 0th percentile, respectively. Therefore, the revised cut-off score after lowering the cut-off percentile is 103 for General/EWS, 90 for General PwBD, and -40 for SC/ST/OBC (Including PwBD of SC/ST/OBC) categories, respectively.

During the recent hearing, the Court noted that the issue of lowering cut-offs and resulting complications in counselling has been happening every year.

Source: Medical Dialogues - May 06,2026