The National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that 95,913 additional doctors had become eligible to participate in counselling for the postgraduate medical entrance exam after the government decided to sharply reduce the cutoff marks for the third round.

The board told the court that any decision to quash the January 13 notification reducing the cutoffs would have an adverse effect on the future of these candidates. The board says a lack of enough interested candidates forced the decision to reduce the cutoff marks midway through the counselling process.

The court had on February 6 asked the board to explain why it had drastically slashed the qualifying marks, after petitioners argued this would hit the quality of medical services.

The board said in its counter-affidavit to the court on Tuesday: “It is ex facie apparent that pursuant to the lowering of cutoff, 95,913 additional candidates have now become eligible to participate in the counselling for NEET-PG 2025. It is the
respectful submission of the answering Respondent that any order passed in the present writ petition shall affect these candidates who are not before this Hon’ble Court, and on this ground alone, the present petition is liable to be dismissed.”

The board stated that the decision to reduce the qualifying marks was taken by the Union ministry of health and family welfare and the National Medical Commission, and it had no role in this.

While seeking an explanation for reducing the cutoff marks, a bench of Justice P.S. Narasimha and Justice Alok Aradhe had told additional solicitor-general Aishwarya Rai, appearing for the board: “We only want that our conscience is satisfied that there is no devious reason behind it. That is all we want.”

The board is under the supervision of the health and family welfare ministry.

The bench had made the oral observation while dealing with a joint PIL filed by a group of social activists challenging the drastic reduction in the qualifying marks for doctors appearing for the postgraduate exams.

The government had through a notification on January 13 — after the first two rounds of counselling — reduced the minimum qualifying cutoff marks for general candidates to 103 from the original 276 (out of 800).

For SC, ST and OBC candidates, the cutoff was lowered from 235 to 40, and for candidates with disabilities, from 255 to 90.

The petitioners have contended that this year, there are 80,000 postgraduate seats while over 1.28 lakh candidates had qualified, going by the original cutoff marks.