A recent announcement by the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS) has caused quite a stir on social media, especially among aspirants of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test Postgraduate (NEET-PG) 2025 exam.
In a notice dated yesterday, March 17, the NBE announced that NEET-PG 2025, which is scheduled to be held on June 15, will be conducted in two shifts, and the final scores will be calculated through the process of normalisation.
This announcement caused a great deal of worry among aspirants and the medical community at large on social media, who all expressed doubts about whether the NBE could conduct the exam smoothly in two shifts.
As a result, some medical activists, influencers and leaders from various doctors’ associations chose to highlight the students’ grievances and disagreement with the two-shift system.
For instance, Dr Dhruv Chauha, National Convener of the Indian Medical Association-Junior Doctors’ Network (IMA-JDN) initiated an X (formerly known as Twitter) storm against the announcement today, March 18.
He also offered to help candidates who were willing to challenge the decision legally.
Leaders of various medical associations, such as Dr Rohan Krishnan, Chief Patron of the Federation of All India Medical Association (FAIMA), and Dr Jakir Khan, National Director of the Doctors’ Welfare Federation (DWF), wrote to the NBE urging them to reconsider this decision.
In addition, medical activist Dr Vivek Pandey also took to X to mobilise his fellow doctors and NEET-PG aspirants to file grievances with NBEMS, urging it to conduct NEET-PG 2025 in a single shift.
To recall, NEET-PG 2024 was conducted in two shifts, and candidates who appeared for the exam alleged discrepancies in the scores, and claimed that the normalisation process was flawed.
Students alleged that the difficulty levels of both shifts varied, making the normalisation process biased.
Moreover, with NBE not disclosing the answer keys, question papers, raw scores and the normalisation method it used to calculate the percentile scores led to a lengthy legal battle between aspirants and the NBE, with the former filing a petition at the Supreme Court of India accusing the latter of lacking transparency.
With the NBE choosing to adopt the same method to conduct NEET-PG 2025 and calculate final scores, despite controversy, aspirants fear that the anxieties and exam complications that were prevalent last year could inflict them too.
