The National Board of Examination (NBE) that conducts the screening test for post-graduate medical courses further extends the internship cut-off date to August 11 thereby making an additional 13,000 MBBS students from five states eligible for 2023 examination, and the initially announcement internship cut-off date of March 30 was extended by the body in January to June 30.

“Considering the future of more than 13,000 MBBS students across 5 States/UTs who were not eligible for #NEET PG 2023 exam due to delayed internship, MoHFW has decided to extend last date of completion of internship for eligibility to 11th Aug 2023,” said the union health ministry in a tweet. The ministry also said that the internship cut-off for dental students has been extended to June 30, making an additional 3,000 eligible for the MDS 2023 examination.

After the finals for graduation, it is mandatory for all medical students to complete a one-year internship before they are eligible for post-graduation. The initial cut-off date for completing this internship by March-end meant that nearly half the students from the current batch of applicants would have been ineligible. The pandemic resulted in delays of the medical academic calendar over the last three years.

The additional students who become eligible, however, will have to select their preference for city to give the examination where seats are still available after the registration of the students who qualified previously.

A notification was issued by NBE about the postponement on Tuesday, which added, “Rest of the terms and conditions as detailed in the bulletin shall remain unchanged,” essentially implying that the qualifying examination will still take place as scheduled on March 5.

This is similar to what happened last year, with around five month gap between the examination and counselling during 2022. There were protests to delay the examinations last year as well because the counselling for the 2021 round ended just days before the examination; many students sit for multiple rounds of NEET PG in order to get seats of their choice.

Several protests have been taken place over the last two years to both expedite counselling and delay examinations.

“Last year’s counselling ended in December and the aspirants were sitting in those counselling now they have got only two months’ time for preparation and revision which is very less. This year also the counselling will not start 4-5 months after the exam so why not give the students more time to study and postpone the exam and conduct it in the month of May-June? If the authorities want, they can also conduct the counselling within a month. He added that what will the aspirants do between the after exam and till counselling period? Nobody will give them a job and if they extend their internship, it will be of no use to them,” said Dr Rohan Krishnan, National Chairman, Federation of All India Medical Association, (FAIMA).

The NEET PG schedule has been severely affected over the last two years, leading to a shortage of PG students in medical college hospitals who work as junior resident doctors as part of their training. Resident doctors from FORDA and FAIMA had taken to the streets in December 2021 asking the government to expedite the counselling that was in abeyance for several months because of a series of court cases about the new quota for the economically weaker sections.

The counselling for 2021 started in February 2022 and the exams for the 2022 PG batch was conducted just days after the counselling for the previous year ended. Although the result for the same was announced within ten days, it was a few months before the counselling started due to some procedural delays.

The schedule may be re-set next year, with the government planning to replace NEET-PG 2024 onwards with National Exit Test (NExT) – a two-part exit test for all MBBS students and foreign medical graduates that will be the basis for grant of medical licenses and selection for PG courses.