1140 NEET PG 2025 Seats Remained Vacant After Stray Round; No Plan to Scrap NEET: Centre to Rajya Sabha
New Delhi- The Union Government has informed the Rajya Sabha that a total of 1,140 postgraduate (PG) medical seats remained vacant across government and private medical colleges after the stray round of the National Eligibility and Entrance Test-Postgraduate (NEET PG) counselling for the academic year 2025.
The Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare, Smt. Anupriya Patel, shared the information in response to question raised by MP, Smt. Rajathi on March 17, 2026.
The Medical Counselling Committee (MCC), under the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), conducts counselling for 50% All India Quota (AIQ) seats and 100% seats of Central and Deemed Universities. Meanwhile, counselling for State quota seats and private medical colleges is conducted by the respective State authorities.
To address the issue of vacant seats, the government reduced the qualifying percentile for NEET PG 2025 counselling. Therefore, the revised eligibility criteria for the General (UR) Category was to reduced to above the 7th percentile; above 5th percentile for the UR-PwD Category is above the 5th percentile, and all candidates in the SC/ST/OBC Categories were declared qualified.
Meanwhile, while responding to the question asked by the MP, Smt. Rajathi regarding the discontinuation of the NEET exam, the government clarified that there is no proposal to discontinue NEET. As per Section 14 of the National Medical Commission (NMC) Act, 2019, NEET is mandated as a uniform entrance test for admission to undergraduate and postgraduate medical courses across the country.
"NEET is a historic reform which provides opportunity to meritorious students to get admission in the best medical institutions in the country. It has resulted in greater transparency and reduced the burden of appearing in multiple entrance examination for prospective candidates," the minister stated in the parliament
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