The Union government has decided to remove the upper-age limit for appearing in NEET-UG examination, providing more opportunities for medical aspirants to sit in the qualifying test.
The National Medical Commission has decided that there should not be any fixed upper-age limit for appearing in the NEET-UG examination, the Commission conveyed to the National Testing Agency on Wednesday.
As per the Regulations on Graduate Medical Education, 1997 the upper-age limit for candidates appearing for National Eligibility Entrance Test and seeking admission to MBBS programme shall be 25 years as on the date of examination.
There is a five-year relaxation for candidates belonging to SC/ST/OBC category and persons entitled for reservation under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016.
India has more than 88,000 MBBS seats for which close to 16 lakh students sat in the NEET-UG last year. The numbers of UG seats have increased by 72 per cent from 51,348 before 2014 to 88,120 seats, the Union Health Ministry informed the Lok Sabha on December 10. Nearly half of these seats are in government medical colleges.
The NMC responded to the NTA when the later sought the commission's views on the draft information bulletin for the NEET-UG course 2022. The NMC observed that the decision on having no upper-age limit for appearing in NEET-UG was taken at the fourth meeting of the Commission on October 21, 2021 and a process to modify the 1997 regulations was initiated.
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