Over 5k postgraduate seats in broad speciality lying vacant for 2019-20: Govt

A total of 5,543 postgraduate seats in broad specialty and 128 in super-specialty subjects are lying vacant for the academic year 2019-20, Minister of State Ashwini Choubey informed the Parliament on Tuesday.

Mostly pre-para medical (non-clinical) subject seats remain vacant as these are not preferred by the students due to their career prospects, he told the Rajya Sabha.

" As per information provided by Board of Governors in supersession of Medical Council of India, 5,543 postgraduate seats in broad specialty and 128 postgraduate seats in super-specialty subjects are lying vacant for the academic year 2019-20," Choubey said.

Explaining the steps taken by the government, the minister said that after a review of the vacant seats in the current academic year, the central government in consultation with the BoG, MCI, has lowered the qualifying percentile for NEET-PG by six percentile.

Further, in super-specialty courses of CTVS, cardiology and pediatrics surgery, percentile has been lowered to 20 percentile, while for other super-specialty courses percentile has been lowered to 40 percentile, he said.