FAIMA writes to health ministry seeking reduction of cutoff percentile for NEET Super Speciality admissions

What happens when you increase the spending on health infrastructure for medical courses but have no incoming doctors to fill the seats? If you are thinking this is akin to buying a car but not having anyone to drive it, then that pretty much encapsulates the state of affairs of the super-speciality medical seats in the country right now. The high cutoff percentile for NEET Super Speciality 2021 has meant that aspirants are unable to join for these prestigious and much-needed courses. 

To address this issue, the Federation of All India Medical Association (FAIMA) has written a letter to the Minister for Health and Family Welfare, requesting to reduce the cutoff percentile for the mop-up/stray vacancy round. As per the letter, there are a total of 889 super speciality seats that have gone unfilled after the second round of counselling for NEET Super Speciality 2021. We spoke to Dr Rohan Krishnan, President of FAIMA, to know more about the ramifications of this scenario. 

"This is not the first time that we have requested a reduction in the cutoff for super-speciality admissions. There is an urgent need to have an established policy regarding the lowering of the percentile in order to facilitate admissions to these medical seats so that they don't go to waste every year," said Dr Rohan. He pointed to the arbitrary nature of lowering cutoffs when in 2019 the cutoff percentile was decreased to the 20th percentile in the mop-up round, while it was down to only 45th percentile the following year.

Dr Rohan also spoke on how seats being vacant incurs huge losses on the part of medical colleges who have to manage the maintenance of the super-speciality departments without the fees obtained from potential incoming students. When the question of losing merit due to the reduction of percentile was raised, he said, "The applicants are already doctors who have a specialised qualification to their name. Besides, they would have to clear all exams to receive the super-speciality degree. Their merit is already established."

"At a time when there is a shortage of super-specialist doctors, the government needs to do more in order to ensure that the seats are filled in a systematic way every year and not have arbitrary decisions for counselling," said Dr Rohan. He also said that unless accommodated during counselling, it would lead to the wastage of another year in the preparation of the NEET Super Speciality entrance exam for the aspiring doctors.