NEET-PG 2025: Candidates “left stranded” as counselling dates yet to be announced

As All India Quota (AIQ) counselling dates for the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test Postgraduate 2025 (NEET-PG 2025) have not yet been announced by the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC), leaving aspirants tense and on edge.  

To add to the aspirants’ worries, the Supreme Court hearing on the exam’s transparency has no hearing date in sight. Furthermore, personal data of thousands of NEET-PG 2025 candidates — including names, scores, contact details, and course preferences — has been allegedly leaked online and is being sold for paltry sums, ranging from Rs 3,500 and Rs 15,000.

These disturbing trends in this year’s NEET-PG session has put the futures of over 1.2 lakh qualified aspirants on hold, with most of them receiving no clarity on their admissions, who are beginning to doubt the integrity of the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS), the body that conducts NEET-PG every year. 

Aspirants unable to plan ahead

The schedule for the NEET-PG 2025 counselling is yet to be announced even as the exam was conducted two months ago, on August 3, and the results declared soon after, on August 19.

According to officials who spoke to the Times of India, the MCC’s delay stems from the orders of the National Medical Commission (NMC) to keep the counselling on hold, as the Commission is still finalising and approving the addition of new colleges, and increasing MD/MS seats in existing colleges for academic year 2025-26, reportedly.

Further, NMC officials stated that the ongoing Supreme Court case on releasing complete answer keys, also contributed to the delay. 

However, there has been no official notification, or a statement by the NBEMS, regarding any possible delay. The counselling is expected to begin mid-October, but there has been no information of the schedule. 

Aspirants’ sole demand: Clarity

With no idea of when the counselling would start, and a lack of resolution on the transparency plea, aspirants say that they are left without a clear path ahead. 

“Right now, we are at a loss — should we join junior residency, or should we wait for counselling and finish our postgraduate?”, an aspirant from Haryana questions, on the condition of anonymity. 

He explains that many candidates would wait for the admissions process to begin, and cannot start working until they receive any form of confirmation about the counselling process. “During this period, we are unemployed. If we start working, we will have to quit eventually if we have to get admitted to MD or MS,” he states. 

The aspirant adds that for those already working as junior resident doctors when they appeared for NEET-PG, quitting would be even more difficult. “They have to plan ahead if they have to resign, as they will have to let go of 1-2 months’ salaries. Some states also have a bond policy where junior residents will have to shell out lakhs of rupees in penalty if they resign,” he details. 

Further, he states that a delay in counselling means a delay in when their postgraduate education begins — which would have further ramifications in their career. “We want to start our careers as soon as we can, but these delays prevent that from happening. We are left stranded, with no clear roadmap of the future,” he sighs. 

NBEMS’ conduct under scrutiny

According to candidates, the blame for these mishaps falls squarely on the NBEMS. 

For years, aspirants have alleged that the NBEMS lacks transparency and accountability in its operations, from how the exam is evaluated to how results are declared. Candidates have said that NBEMS’ frequent rescheduling of the exam, city allotments not matching preferences, sudden changes in exam format or shift system in the past have been sources of confusion. 

They say that their biggest bone of contention with the NBEMS is their refusal to issue the question papers, answer keys and candidates’ response sheets of the exams they conduct. 

On April 29 this year, however, the Supreme Court directed NBEMS to publish the NEET-PG raw scores, answer keys, and normalisation formula used to calculate final scores so that candidates could verify their results.

However, the NBEMS did not fully comply with these directions; instead, it released only question IDs and corresponding correct options from a “master question set,” rather than the complete question papers and individual response sheets as expected. 

Since each candidate received a differently shuffled set of questions and answer options, this disclosure was effectively meaningless for cross-verification — prompting them to approach the Supreme Court again. 

Whiff of corruption, or plain incompetence?

“It feels like the medical entrance exams are rigged against ordinary candidates,” an aspirant from Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, who is also involved in the case regarding NEET-PG 2025 answer keys, says on the condition of anonymity. 

He further claims that the NBEMS’ decisions and behaviour might be influenced by other motives. “We’ve heard from professors at medical colleges that backdoor admissions to medical colleges have been increasing. We don’t know for sure that the NBEMS isn’t involved,” he alleges.

However, some candidates believe that these lapses and miscommunications have been happening due to a simpler reason — incompetence, thus making it a classic case of Hanlon’s Razor. 

“There seem to be lapses in NEET-PG every year, but candidates' concerns get ignored. Clearly, the NBEMS seems to be struggling to conduct exams properly,” says Dr Arun Kumar, National General Secretary of the United Doctors’ Front (UDF), and a NEET-PG aspirant himself. 

He reveals that this lackadaisical behaviour by the Board is affecting other exams it conducts, and severely impacting India’s medical system. “For the first time in years, there is no fresh batch of Super Speciality students due to the delay in the NEET-SS 2024 exam. PG medical interns are overburdened at hospitals because there are no new students,” he reveals. 

Dr Kumar states that as an aspirant, he believes that the NBEMS must undergo a rigorous transformation, or must be overhauled, or rather dissolved, if it is unable to ensure that these exams are conducted every year without hassle. 

“If the NBEMS doesn’t want delays in the exam calendar, it must conduct the exams without causing inconvenience to those appearing for them. Candidates cannot approach courts every year to challenge discrepancies,” he says.