THE COUNTRY’S apex medical education regulator, the National Medical Commission (NMC), has proposed moving away from the percentile process to a rank-based system for admissions to post-graduate and super-speciality courses to reduce delays between different rounds of counselling.Doctors, however, argue that this change is unlikely to resolve the problem of meritless candidates also becoming eligible for seats as the qualifying percentile is reduced.“NMC is in the process of issuing new regulations, which are yet to be finalised, wherein only rank-based system for NEET PG & SS counselling will be adopted. No percentile marks will be declared in results, only ranks will be given to the candidates… The commission has accorded in-principle approval for the proposed change,” said a report, prepared by a 12-member expert committee, submitted to the Supreme Court.Also Read | Scrapped medical education rules won’t lower standards for colleges, says NMCAt present, the decision to reduce the percentile in order to fill up PG and super-speciality seats in later rounds of counselling is taken by a competent authority “in consonance with the stakeholders depending on the number of seats lying vacant”.Moving to a rank-based system, on the other hand, will do away with this requirement of permission from a competent authority, thereby facilitating the completion of the counselling process in the prescribed time frame, according to the suggestions by the regulators and minutes of the meetings held.Dr Dhruv Chauhan, spokesperson for the Indian Medical Association-Junior Doctors’ Network, said: “Our contention is that candidates with even negative marks become eligible for PG seats. The rank-based system does not result in any significant change in allocation of seats — even to candidates scoring as low as -40 marks, which has happened in the past. The National Medical Commission has nowhere said that it will keep the cut-off at least 0 marks.”“Just because seats remain vacant, the standards should not be diluted. Instead, the NMC needs to take note of seats that have consistently remained vacant over the last several years and cancel them. These are seats that not even candidates with the lowest marks want to study at.”Story continues below this adAlso Read | New rules for doctors online: No ‘100% success’ claims, fake reviews, AI adsDigital ecosystemAfter introducing a digital counselling system this year onwards, the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) — which allocates central-quota medical seats at all levels — has had discussions on a more hands-off approach. “MCC is working towards digitalising the whole counselling process with minimum human intervention to ensure transparency and accountability,” said the expert-committee report.This year, for the first time, candidates who wished to upgrade their seats in subsequent rounds of counselling did not have to travel to their selected institute, provide their documents and registration fee, before going back to get their original documents and fees when they got upgraded.The MCC further wants to ensure that the results can be shared even with the state authorities and state department of medical education online. “The trial run of software will be taken once it is ready and states also upgrade their computer/digital system,” the report said.Story continues below this adAlso Read | India adds nearly 8,000 MBBS seats, taking total to 1.36 lakh, most in private collegesImportantly, a complete online database of the UG and PG medical seats has already been prepared, which will be minimally changed each year based on the decision of the NMC on adding or cancelling seats. Till 2025, the MCC relied on colleges to provide details of their seats to it before counselling students, which was manually verified by the NMC. This sometimes resulted in duplication of seats or some seats getting added only in the second or third round of counselling, depriving more meritorious students of the choice.The NMC has also said that it will update any seats well before the date of commencement of counselling.The MCC will also create an audit mechanism 2027 onwards to identify the issues with the counselling process and thereafter find practical and implementable solutions.