NEET SS 2025 cutoff may be reduced to 30th percentile for special stray vacancy round: Centre tells SC
Supreme Court of India
New Delhi: After the Supreme Court directed the Centre to reconsider its decision on the NEET SS 2025 cutoff, the Union Government has reportedly agreed to reduce the cutoff, and it may go from the 50th to the 30th percentile for the proposed special stray vacancy round.
Due to this decision, around 6,000 additional candidates will now be eligible to appear in the counselling process for getting admitted to the super-speciality courses.
Last week, the Apex Court bench had expressed concern over a large number of super-speciality seats going vacant every year and asked the Union Government to reconsider its decision of not lowering the cut-off percentile for the NEET-SS seats in the current academic year.
The top court bench had issued this direction after the Additional Solicitor-General Aishwarya Bhati, who appeared on behalf of the Centre, informed that the Government was willing to conduct a stray vacancy round without lowering the cut-off. She had further said that the vacant seats would revert to States like Tamil Nadu.
According to a TOI report, the Government has now agreed to lower the cut-off percentile for NEET-SS seats. Filing a two-page note before a bench of Justices P S Narasimha and Alok Aradhe, the Government said that the matter has since been reconsidered in consultation with stakeholders concerned.
"In order to ensure available super speciality seats do not remain vacant and that the available training capacity is optimally utilised, it has been decided that the qualifying percentile for NEET-SS may be reduced from the existing 50th percentile to the 30th percentile for the purpose of proposed special stray vacancy round," the Government said
However, the Centre added that those students who had already taken admission would not be allowed to appear in the special stray vacancy round. The Government proposed the round "be conducted strictly in accordance with the existing principles or rules applicable to a stray vacancy round, with no provision for upgradation of candidates who are already holding/joined a seat."
After the second round of NEET-SS counselling, a total of 1,857 super speciality seats - including 1,094 DM/MCh seats and 763 DNB-SS seats - remained unfilled.
Case Background:
The plea before the Supreme Court was filed by the Tamil Nadu Medical Officers Association, which requested the Centre to return 100% of the unfilled in-service seats to the State.
The pending legal issue over the 151 vacant super speciality seats in Tamil Nadu halted the NEET-SS 2025 counselling for months. On July 28, 2026, the Supreme Court of India directed the Tamil Nadu government to revert the unfilled 151 NEET SS seats to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) by July 29, 2026, and asked the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) to complete the NEET SS 2025 counselling process within two weeks.
Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that following the direction issued by the Supreme Court, the Tamil Nadu Medical Officers approached the apex court seeking a modification of its order. The Association had requested the Court to direct that all unfilled in-service super specialty seats should be returned to the State of Tamil Nadu if the qualifying percentile is reduced after the second round of counselling.
Recently, the Union Government informed the Supreme Court about its decision to return all unfilled NEET SS 2025 seats to Tamil Nadu, which had been transferred to the All India Quota for counselling. Further, the Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati had also told a bench of Justice PS Narasimha and Justice Alok Aradhe that the government would also consider reducing the qualifying percentile to help fill the remaining seats. The Centre was supposed to inform the Court about the extent of the reduction on September 8.
Earlier, doctors had urged the Union Health Minister Shri J P Nadda to conduct an additional round (Round 3) of the NEET SS 2025 counselling to ensure optimum utilisation of the unfilled seats.
Submitting a representation to the Union Health Minister, the doctors under the Indian Medical Association Junior Doctors Network (IMA-JDN) mentioned that leaving these super-speciality seats vacant would result in the loss of valuable training opportunities for the current academic session. It would also result in a shortage of trained Super-Specialists in the country, they pointed out.
