SC Directs NBE to Conduct NEET-PG 2025 in Single Shift

New Delhi – The Supreme Court on Friday criticized the National Board of Examinations (NBE) for its decision to hold the NEET-PG 2025 examination in two separate shifts and ordered that the exam be conducted in a single session going forward.

A bench led by Justice Vikram Nath, along with Justices Sanjay Kumar and N.K. Anjaria, observed that conducting the exam in two shifts creates arbitrariness and fails to ensure a level playing field for all candidates.

“The question papers in two shifts can never be of the same difficulty level. While last year’s NEET-PG 2024 may have been conducted in two shifts due to specific circumstances, the examining body should have made arrangements to conduct the exam in a single shift,” the bench remarked.

The court was hearing multiple petitions that raised concerns about the lack of transparency in the conduct of NEET-PG exams. Petitioners argued that holding the exam in multiple shifts, the use of normalization techniques, and changes to the tie-breaking criteria had negatively impacted candidates.

They further alleged that the NEET-PG information bulletin was being altered arbitrarily by the authorities, and pointed out the absence of any governing rules or regulations for the exam’s conduct. A key grievance was that NBE did not provide access to question papers, answer keys, or response sheets, unlike other national-level exams.

One petition, filed by advocate Parul Shukla, stated that NEET-PG had historically been a single-day, single-shift examination to maintain fairness and uniform standards. It also highlighted that in NEET-PG 2024, unlike previous years, candidates were not informed of their total scores or the number of correct and incorrect responses.

The Supreme Court had earlier issued notices to the Centre, NBE, and the National Medical Commission (NMC) on a petition by the United Doctors Front (UDF), challenging the two-shift format for NEET-PG 2025.

The petition also sought the Court’s urgent intervention for a single-shift examination format and requested an interim stay on the NEET-PG 2025 exam, which is scheduled to be held on June 15.

With inputs from IANS