The Centre approved lowering the cut-off scores for admission to postgraduate PG medical programmes for 2022-23 on Monday, October 17, citing a large number of vacant seats in the PG counselling of last year's academic session.

Official sources told PTI, the cut-off marks would be reduced by 25% across all categories.

The PTI report stated, according to an official source, the revised qualifying percentile/cutoff for general category candidates would be 25 percentile, for people with disabilities in the general category (PWD-general) it would be 20 percentile and for both the SC/ST/OBC and people with disabilities in the SC/ST/OBC category it would be 15 percentile.

According to the officials, the decision was made based on recommendations from the National Medical Commission (NMC). The PTI report stated that over 1,400 seats were unfilled in the previous session, primarily in pre- and para-clinical courses.

"Since such post-graduate seats going vacant is a sheer wastage of resources in a country where postgraduate medical seats are premium, a decision to reduce cut-off for admission to post-graduate courses for 2022 23 by 25 percentile across all categories has been taken," an official source said, as reported by PTI.

The National Medical Council (NMC) suggested reducing the qualifying percentile for postgraduate courses for 2022 at a meeting on October 14.