– Ronita Torcato

Hundreds of students with NEET scores of 400 have failed to get seats in medical colleges but a student with a meagre 118 secured admission in a private institution under the “meritorious” state quota raising serious questions about transparency in Maharashtra’s NEET counselling.

“How can this be?!” exclaimed an aggrieved student who didn’t make it. “There should be an inquiry.”

The National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) is an annual mandatory offline entrance exam conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA) for admission to undergraduate medical courses like MBBS, BDS and Ayush at various institutions in India and abroad.

There are government MBBS colleges in India where the NEET cutoff is generally low. A student may also have better chances of securing admission in private medical colleges, deemed universities, or in less competitive MD branches like Pathology, Community Medicine, or Microbiology.

According to CET officials, the candidate with 118 was recently admitted at SSPM Medical College under the institute-level admission round.

It is pertinent to note that the cutoff for Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) admissions in Maharashtra dropped steeply this year, with the State Common Entrance Test (CET) Cell announcing a qualifying score of 504 for government medical colleges, a steep fall from last year’s 629.

In private unaided medical colleges, the cutoff slid to a dismal 118 marks, marking one of the biggest year-on-year declines in recent admission cycles.

The CET Cell is conducting admissions for 8,535 MBBS seats in 64 medical colleges, including 4,936 in government institutions and 3,599 in private ones this year.

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