Delhi High Court rejects PIL against reduced cut-off for NEET PG 2025-26

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday dismissed a public interest litigation (PIL) petition challenging the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences’ (NBEMS) decision to drastically reduce the qualifying cut-off percentiles for NEET PG 2025-26. 

A Division Bench of Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia said that it was not in the public interest for the seats to stay vacant. 

On the petitioners’ argument that lowering the cut-off will impact the quality of doctors, the Bench said that NEET PG is only an entrance exam, and that the doctors will undergo postgraduate classes to specialise.

“You are saying this will send MBBS doctors with less competence to PG. The purpose is to make them more skilled in a particular area. These examinations doe no ipso facto judge the quality of doctors. They will have to complete the PG Course,” the Bench remarked.  

The Court then proceeded to dismiss the plea filed by one Sanchit Seth. 

Controversy erupted over NEET PG 2025-26 admissions cycle after the NBEMS lowered qualifying cut-offs to fill tens of thousands of vacant postgraduate medical seats after two rounds of counselling.

The qualifying percentile for general candidates was reduced from 50^th to 7^th, and for reserved categories to the zero percentile, meaning even candidates with very low or negative scores became eligible for counselling.

Notably, a PIL has also been filed before the Supreme Court challenging the cut-off reduction as arbitrary and harmful to the credibility of the NEET PG process. 

However, the High Court was today informed that the petition is lying in defects and is still to be listed.

Advocate T Singhdev appeared for the government before the High Court and stated that the government had taken a policy decision to lower the percentile to fill the nearly 10,000 PG seats that remained vacant after the second round of counselling. 

“Central government is entitled to do this, given the large number of seats vacant. The pool of people needed in the counselling needs to be enlarged,” he said. 

Singhdev added that the step is also necessary because doctors with higher merit do not opt for certain courses, and those with lower merit may choose those courses. 

The counsel for the petitioner stressed that they did not want seats to remain vacant but were concerned about the quality of the candidates. 

After hearing the parties, the Court rejected the case.

A similar petition has been filed before the Allahabad High Court as well though it is yet to be listed for hearing.