NEET PG Normalisation Plea to be Heard by Supreme Court on May 22
Supreme Court of India
New Delhi: The Supreme Court will hear the plea challenging the normalisation process in the National Eligibility-Entrance Test Postgraduate (NEET-PG) examination on May 22, 2025.
Even though the pleas filed in this regard were scheduled for a hearing on May 20, the hearing was postponed due to the Waqf case, News 18 has reported.
Currently, two related pleas are pending before the Supreme Court. The first was one filed in September last year and it prayed for transparency in the NEET PG 2024 examination and demanded for the release of the answer keys, individual scorecards. It had also prayed for setting up a grievance redressal mechanism for NEET PG 2024.
Earlier this year, another plea was filed by the United Doctors Front (UDF) and it challenged the National Board of Examination's decision of holding the NEET PG 2025 examination in two shifts and the normalisation formula adopted by NBE.
Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that while considering the first plea, the Supreme Court bench of Chief Justice of India Gavai and Justice AG Masih remarked that the pleas mainly concerned NEET PG 2024 and the matter now seemed infructuous. However, the petitioners' counsel had pointed out that the present batch concerned the larger issues of marks normalisation, correction of answer keys and discrepancies in marks.
Also Read: NEET PG Evaluation Row: SC Lists Plea on Normalisation, Transparency for May 20
The normalisation formula, regarding which the aspirants have been expressing their doubts, was introduced to neutralise the effect of tougher or easier papers for NEET PG held in multiple shifts. This formula is used to calculate the score, based on which the merit list is prepared.
In this regard, the NBE's counsel informed the top court bench that since the NEET PG is a super-specialty exam in which around 2.4 lakh candidates appear each year, "the questions at that level of appropriate difficulty are very limited".
However, after considering the submissions by both parties, the Supreme Court bench agreed to relist the matter with the plea filed by UDF, which challenged the normalisation formula.
Even though these pleas were scheduled for a hearing on May 20, the hearing of these cases had to be postponed due to the Waqf case, News 18 has reported. Now, both of these pleas have been scheduled for a hearing on May 22, 2025.
UDF has prayed that the upcoming PG medical entrance test examination be conducted in a single shift to ensure transparency, uniformity in difficulty levels, and equal standards of evaluation.
The association has contended that this violates the aspirants’ fundamental rights under Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution, specifically the right to equality and the right to a fair, merit-based opportunity, the association mentioned in a release.
Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that a recent public survey conducted on the social media platform by UDF revealed that more than 2,513 NEET-PG aspirants anticipated, and a remarkable 96% of respondents demanded that the examination be conducted in a single shift to ensure fairness, transparency, and uniform evaluation. Raising this demand, UDF recently urged the Union Health Minister, Shri J.P. Nadda to reconsider the decision to conduct the PG medical entrance test in two shifts.
Previously, raising concerns about the multiple-shift exam format for NEET PG, UDF had highlighted the issues if normalisation discrepancies, legal complexities, and loss of candidate confidence.
Doctors across the country have been upset over the conduct of the upcoming NEET PG 2025 exam after the NBEMS announced that it would be held in two shifts on June 15, 2025. While the first shift is scheduled from 9:00 AM to 12:30 PM, the second shift is scheduled from 3:30 PM to 7:00 PM.
The doctors expressed their concerns primarily over the normalisation process. Even though the normalisation formula was introduced for NEET PG 2024 to adjust the scores across different exam shifts to ensure fairness, critics have argued that the process is flawed.
A few candidates who appeared in the second shift of the NEET PG 2024 exam had questioned the normalisation formula adopted by NBEMS and further claimed that the board had scammed them in the name of a competitive exam. They pointed out that the Shift 2 paper was tougher compared to Shift 1 and further termed the process of calculating scores as debatable. These concerns were also raised before the Supreme Court, where the aspirants prayed for transparency in the NEET PG 2024 exam.
Also Read: NEET PG 2025 Double Shifts: Supreme Court issues Notice to Centre, NMC, NBE
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