Institute of Legal and Management Studies

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear in the last week of May, the plea challenging the decision of the National Board of Examination (NBE) to conduct the NEET PG 2025 exams in two shifts.

The Counsel for the petitioners mentioned before the bench of CJI BR Gavai and Justice AG Masih for an urgent listing of the matter, considering that the exams would soon commence in June.

He said, "This is regarding NEET PG of this year, we are challenging the two exams happening, the process starts in June, kindly have it on Monday."

The CJI replied, "Will keep it next week"

Notably, the NEET PG exam is scheduled to take place on June 15. The results will be declared by July 15.

The Court had on May 5 sought a response from the National Board of Examinations, National Medical Council and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

Recently, the Supreme Court delivered a judgment giving various directions to stop seat-blocking in NEET-PG counselling. The Court also directed the publication of raw scores, answer keys and normalisation formulae of NEET-PG exams.

Why Is NBE's Two-Shift Policy Under Challenge?

As per the writ petition, holding the examination in two shifts has the potential for unfairness due to varying difficulty levels between shifts. It seeks direction to the National Board of Examinations to conduct the NEET-PG 2025 in a single shift to maintain "just, fair, reasonable and equitable" grounds of competition for all the candidates.

"Holding such an extensive examination in two shifts directly violates the rights of the candidates under Article 14 as maintaining just, fair, reasonable, and equitable grounds of competition is almost impossible because of the lack of transparency in the moderation and normalization process. It also violates article 21 of the candidates, as the process violates the basic right to fair examination,"

Further, the plea expresses apprehensions that since NEET-PG 2024 was conducted in a two-shift format, it resulted in a challenge before the Supreme Court because of problems arising out of such a system.

The petition refers to an assessment made by a "prominent online coaching platform" of the disparity in the number of questions in each subject in both shifts in NEET PG 2024. It is stressed that the disparity in questions for each subject creates inflation and variation in marks and rankings.

"As can be clearly seen from the above, the number of questions from several subjects vary, which is likely to grant an undue advantage to several candidates. It will create inflation and variation in marks and rankings, violating the right to equality under article 14 of the candidates. It is humbly submitted that to weed out such discrepancies and provide a uniform/equitable testing ground and fair competition, single shift is the only viable solution."

There is a likelihood that one batch of candidates may face a more difficult question paper than the other batch, as happened in the case of NEET PG 2024, where it was alleged that the question paper in the second shift was easier. Therefore, it is prayed that the NEET PG 2025 be conducted in a single shift, as noted in the petition.

Case Details: Dr. ADITI & ORS v. NATIONAL BOARD OF EXAMINATION IN MEDICAL SCIENCES & ORS| DIARY NO. - 22918/2025