NEW DELHI: A total of 5,543 postgraduate seats in broad speciality and 128 in super-speciality 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 speciality and 128 postgraduate seats in super-speciality 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-speciality courses of CTVS, cardiology and paediatrics surgery, percentile has been lowered to 20 percentile, while for other super-speciality courses percentile has been lowered to 40 percentile, he said.