24/02/2026
*Zero Percentile Admissions: A National Shame the Nation Must Confront*
The decision to allow zero-percentile candidates into postgraduate medical seats is being defended with half-truths and convenient narratives. When examined closely, these justifications collapse under the weight of facts.
Claim 1: NEET-PG aspirants are meritorious because they were selected through NEET-UG
The Truth:
Merit at the 50th percentile in NEET-UG is a statistical illusion, not academic excellence. When nearly 20 lakh students appear and 10 lakh automatically qualify, the cutoff percentile translates to an actual score of barely 15–18%.
Calling this “merit” is an abuse of language. Percentile ranking only reflects relative position in a crowded pool—it does not reflect minimum competence.
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Claim 2: MBBS training of 4.5 years ensures competence
The Truth:
If MBBS training alone guaranteed competence, there would have been no need for an Exit Exam.
The government itself acknowledged serious concerns about the quality of MBBS graduates by introducing NExT in the NMC Act, 2019.
The exam was promised before 2022.
It still hasn’t happened.
The delay is not because competence was assured—but because the regulator failed to deliver. Regulatory failure cannot be compensated by diluting PG standards.
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Claim 3: Thousands of PG seats were lying vacant till Round 3
The Truth:
These vacancies are largely artificial and manufactured, not real.
Due to poor seat-mapping and parallel counselling systems, thousands of candidates are double-allotted seats—one in All-India Counselling and another in State Counselling.
Example:
A candidate is allotted a seat in GMC Nagpur (All-India, Round 2) and simultaneously gets SMS Medical College Jaipur (State Counselling), which he joins.
The GMC Nagpur seat then appears as “vacant” in Round 3.
This is not a lack of candidates.
This is administrative incompetence masquerading as a crisis.
Yet this manufactured vacancy is cited to justify lowering qualifying standards to zero.
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Claim 4: High fees are justified as they are decided by State Fee Regulatory Committees
The Truth:
The government itself admitted that private medical college fees are exorbitant.
That is why, in 2021, the government/NMC directed that 50% of seats in private colleges must be charged at government-college rates.
The matter is pending before the Supreme Court.
You cannot acknowledge fee exploitation on one hand and then blame students for “not opting” these seats on the other.
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The Real Issue
This is not a shortage of students.
This is not a surplus of seats.
This is not about merit vs opportunity.
This is about:
Regulatory failure
Poor counselling design
Exorbitant fees
And finally, sacrificing academic standards to hide systemic incompetence
Lowering the qualifying percentile to zero does not solve a problem—it creates a national shame.
A healthcare system cannot be strengthened by weakening its foundation.
-Dr Raj Shekhar Yadav