Can a -40 score make a specialist?

Doctorshave expressed their concern over the recent decision of the National Board of Examinations (NBE) to reduce the qualifying cut-off for the NEET PG 2025 admissions.

Doctors have pointed out that due to this decision, even those who scored -40 marks in the exam will be eligible to take admission in the highly sought-after clinical specialities, which, according to doctors, will compromise merit.

NBE in a notice dated Tuesday, reduced the minimum qualifying percentile cut-off for counselling of the third round of National Eligibility-Entrance Test Postgraduate (NEET-PG) 2025-2026 for various categories of candidates.

"The result of NEET-PG 2025 was declared on 19th August 2025.

In accordance with the directions of the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Govt. of India vide letter No. U-12021/11/2025-MEC (FTS- 8363852) dated 09.01.2026, the minimum qualifying percentile cut-off for counselling of the third round of NEET-PG 2025-26 for various categories of candidates has been reduced,” NBE mentioned in the notice dated 13.01.2026.

As per the revised qualifying percentiles for NEET-PG 2025, for the academic session 2025-2026, for the General/EWS, General PwBD, SC/ST/OBC(Including PwBD of SC/ST/OBC) categories, the revised qualifying cut-off is 7th, 5th, and 0th percentile, respectively. Therefore, the revised cut-off score after lowering the cut-off percentile is 103 for General/EWS, 90 for General PwBD, and -40 for SC/ST/OBC(Including PwBD of SC/ST/OBC) categories, respectively.

“The information bulletin of NEET-PG 2025 should therefore be read accordingly,” NBEMS mentioned in the notice.

NBE’s decision to reduce the cut-off for the NEET-PG 2025 has been strongly opposed by the members of the medical fraternity.

Reacting to this development, Dr Rohan Krishnan, chief Patron of the FAIMA Doctors Association and a health activist, said that reducing the cut-off to such an extent is actually killing merit. “When qualifying cut-offs are dropped to 7th, 5th & even 0th percentile, what is the purpose of a national merit exam? This is not reform — this is surrender of standards.! Instead of diluting merit just to fill seats, authorities must: Conduct an additional exam if required. Reduce the unnaturally inflated PG seats in sub-standard private colleges —many lack faculty, patient load & basic infrastructure, yet run 20–30 seats per clinical department only to mint money.!!When exams lose meaning, money fills seats, not merit!!Middle-class doctors lose. Crorepati admissions win!! Compare with MRCP(UK) — over 20,000 candidates appear yearly, with only ~40–50% clearing on first attempt. That is what real filtering looks like.!! Two exams are better than destroying merit,” Dr Krishnan mentioned in an X (formerly Twitter) post.