Supreme Court Issues Notice on PIL Challenging NEET-PG Negative Cut-Offs, Hearing on Friday

The Supreme Court issued notice on Wednesday in a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) challenging the decision to reduce the qualifying cut-off percentiles for NEET PG 2025-26. In this case, the hearing is later on Friday, 6 February, 2026 and the petition questions the validity of the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS) notification dated 13 January 2026, which reduced the qualifying percentiles to the cut-off, which has been brought down to insanely low levels, including zero and negative percentiles.

The petition, filed under Article 32 of the Constitution, was taken up to the apex court after being listed earlier for preliminary consideration. A bench of Justice Pamidighantam Sri Narasimha and Justice Alok Aradhe will hear the case on Friday, 6 February, 2026.

What is the NEET-PG 2025 cut-off row?

The issues lie with the lowered cut-offs for NEET-PG 2025-26 counselling, which were made public after the Medical Counselling Committee decided to lower the minimum percentile requirements across categories to fill the vacant postgraduate seats. While NBEMS blamed the vacancies for the decision, the move was criticized by parts of the medical community.

A PIL in the Supreme Court reveals that the drastic lowering of cut-offs results in the selection of students not based on their merit, which is in breach of statutory norms laid down in the National Medical Commission Act, 2019, and is a threat to the quality of medical education, patient safety, and public health. The petition also says that the decision is arbitrary and violates Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution.

The PIL filed by Harisharan Devgan, Dr. Saurav Kumar, Dr Lakshya Mittal, and Dr Akash Soni requests the court to cancel the notification dated 13 January 2026 and reinstate the minimum qualifying standards in NEET-PG admissions.

Why the NEET Cut-Off Issue Matters

NEET-PG is the only national-level entrance test for admissions to MD, MS and PG Diploma courses throughout India. Under the NBEMS umbrella, the examination serves as the screening and ranking test for a very small and highly competitive number of postgraduate medical seats.

Candidates had to obtain at least a qualifying percentile to be considered eligible for counselling, such as the 50th percentile for general category candidates and the 40th percentile for SC, ST, and OBC candidates. These entries were set in order to make certain that only candidates who have a basic level of academic qualification are allowed to enter specialised medical training.