The National Board of Examination and Medical Sciences, on August 3, 2025, concluded the NEET PG 2025 exam with more than 2,42,000 candidates. File
| Photo Credit: The Hindu
Based on data from the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) regarding the 2025-26 academic session, Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu have the highest number of vacant seats under the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Postgraduate) (NEET-PG) 2025-26 across India.
According to data released by the Health Ministry recently, over 18,000 post-graduate medical seats remained unfilled in government and private medical colleges across India despite the completion of Round-2 counselling, prompting the National Board of Examination and Medical Sciences (NBEMS) to bring in a revised qualifying percentile. NBEMS said that the qualifying percentile cut-off for the third round of NEET-PG this year has been reduced to zero for reserved categories.
Meanwhile, all three States – Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu – have over 2000 vacant seats each in private/management and NRI quota. According to the Central Government data, the number of PG seats increased from 40,858 in 2020 to approximately 80,291 PG medical seats (including 17,707 Diplomate of National Board (DNB), and Diploma seats etc).
Subjects that have the maximum vacant seats include – microbiology, pathology, biochemistry, forensic medicine and pharmacology. Subjects including general medicine, radio-diagnosis, general surgery, dermatology, obstetrics and gynaecology, and paediatrics are the most in demand.
The result of NEET-PG 2025 was declared on 19th August 2025. NBEMS on August 3, last year, concluded the NEET PG 2025 exam with more than 2,42,000 candidates. The exam was conducted in a single shift on the computer-based platform across 301 cities and in 1052 test centres.
Explaining why so many seats stay vacant across India Rohan Krishnan, chief patron, Federation of All India Medical Association (FAIIMS) Doctors’ Association, said that while lowering NEET PG qualifying percentile destroys the credibility of this exam it is the private colleges fee structure that begins at 20 lakh and goes up to 4 crore that is the main deterrent and reason for vacant seats.
“The prohibitive cost of education, reluctance to pick up non-clinical subjects, lack of good teaching staff, infrastructure, patient load and stipend – are also issues that need to be immediately addressed if we want to ensure that NEET PG seats are taken up,” said a senior doctor.
Published – January 28, 2026 03:44 am IST
