TN NEET SS inservice seats: SC seeks Centre's response on cutoff reduction plea
Supreme Court of India
New Delhi: The Supreme Court has sought the Centre's response to a plea seeking a reduction in the NEET SS cut off percentile for in-service government doctors.
Filing the plea, the Tamil Nadu Medical Officers Association has made an application seeking the Centre to return 100% of the unfilled in-service seats to the State. After hearing senior advocate P. Wilson, appearing for the association, the top court bench headed by Justice P.S. Narasimha sought the Union Government's response on this and posted the matter for further hearing on August 31.
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.
In the July 28 order, the Apex Court had also ordered that the second round of NEET SS counselling should be conducted using the existing qualifying percentile, clarifying that if the qualifying percentile is reduced after the second round, 50% of such seats will be returned to the Tamil Nadu government, while the remaining 50% will be filled by the DGHS through subsequent rounds of counselling.
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Contesting this part of the order, the Tamil Nadu Medical Officers Association has filed an interlocutory application seeking its modification. According to the petitioners, these seats form part of the State's 50% reservation for in-service doctors under G.O. Ms. No. 462 dated November 7, 2020, a policy whose constitutional validity was upheld by the Supreme Court in Tamil Nadu Medical Officers Association v. Union of India (2021).
As per the latest media report by The Hindu, the Union Government submitted that out of the 152 seats transferred by the State of Tamil Nadu, approximately 40 seats remained vacant. Referring to this, the counsel for the association, Mr Wilson, submitted that all 40 in-service seats must be returned to the State of Tamil Nadu, as 111 candidates were awaiting a reduction in the qualifying percentile.
Following this submission, the top court bench asked the Union Government to decide whether the qualifying percentile for the Super Speciality admissions should be reduced.
Challenging the "premature diversion" of 152 vacant Super Speciality seats reserved for the in-service candidates to All India Quota, the association sought protection of the State's in-service reservation policy, till a final decision was taken on the reduction of the NEET-SS qualifying percentile. The association has submitted in its plea that Tamil Nadu had earmarked 219 super speciality seats for the in-service candidates for the academic year 2025-2026 and after completing two rounds of counselling, only 68 candidates had joined. This resulted in 152 vacant seats.
"Over 111 in-service candidates remain on the waiting list and are legitimately anticipating reduction of the qualifying percentile in accordance with the consistent practice followed during previous academic sessions. A substantial number of these candidates narrowly missed the existing qualifying percentile and would become eligible if the qualifying percentile is reduced/relaxed," submitted the association, arguing that these candidates possessed a legitimate expectation that they would be considered for admission in the in-service category.
Meanwhile, a representation has been submitted before the government authorities seeking an additional round of NEET SS 2025 counselling. Highlighting that around 1700 super-speciality seats were lying vacant, the doctors under the Indian Medical Association Junior Doctors Network (IMA-JDN) recently 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.
They argued 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.
