Supreme Court allows NEET-PG 2025 to be held in single shift on August 3

Top court grants NBE’s request for more time to finalise centres, emphasises need for transparency and fairness

The Supreme Court on Friday (June 6, 2025) permitted the National Board of Examination (NBE) in Medical Sciences to conduct the NEET-PG 2025 examination in a single shift on August 3.

The postgraduate entrance examination was earlier scheduled for June 15.

The court had on May 30 directed the NBE to hold the examination in a single, and not two, shifts. On June 3, the NBE filed an application seeking more time to make logistical and security arrangements, including finalising additional examination centres across the country. It suggested August 3 as a tentative date, stating that conducting the exam in a single shift would require a significant increase in the number of centres—from 450 to 900.

A Bench comprising Justices P.K. Mishra and Augustine George Masih on Friday allowed the NBE’s request.

The top court, in its May 30 order, had directed the NBE to make “necessary arrangements for holding the NEET-PG 2025 examination in one shift, duly ensuring that complete transparency is maintained and secure centres are identified and commissioned.”

The court had said that holding the examination in two shifts would risk “arbitrariness”.

“Holding the examination in two shifts would invariably enable arbitrariness and not entail at-par evaluation of the comparative merit of the candidates who take the examinations. No two question papers can ever be said to be at an identical level of difficulty or ease. There is bound to be a variation. Normalisation may be applied and adopted in exceptional circumstances but not in a routine manner year after year, especially when the number of candidates is not unduly large, as is the case presently,” the Bench had observed.

The order was passed in response to a petition filed by a group of students, who contended that conducting the examination in two shifts would create an uneven playing field, as the question papers could not be of uniform standard and difficulty.

The court also took note of the examination fee collected by the NBE - ₹3,500 from each general category candidate and ₹2,500 from each SC/ST/PwD candidate.

“Therefore, they possess more than enough funds to commission sufficient number of centres so as to smoothly hold the examination in one shift… The examination for this year is scheduled to be held on June 15, 2025. Two weeks’ time is still there for the examining body to identify more centres so as to hold the examination in one shift,” the Bench had noted in its May 30 order.

Published - June 06, 2025 12:18 pm IST