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NEW DELHI: Medical aspirants seeking postgraduate admissions will get a wider choice this year after the National Medical Commission (NMC) approved 171 additional PG seats across medical colleges and directed counselling authorities to include them without waiting for formal permissions. According to a public notice, the 171 additional seats span key clinical and diagnostic specialties, including general medicine, general surgery, anaesthesiology, obstetrics and gynaecology, paediatrics, radiology, dermatology, emergency medicine, psychiatry, orthopaedics, respiratory medicine and pathology. Colleges across multiple states – including Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Odisha, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh and Haryana – have received additional seats under the appeal process. In a notice issued on Dec 31, 2025, NMC’s Medical Assessment and Rating Board said postgraduate seats granted by the First Appeal Committee for the 2025-26 academic year will be treated as valid for the counselling process. Counselling authorities have been told they need not wait for letters of permission (LoPs) from individual institutions to proceed. The additional seats were approved after medical colleges challenged earlier MARB decisions under provisions of NMC Act, 2019. These appeals were examined by the First Appeal Committee in meetings held on Dec 22 and 23, following which extra seats were sanctioned. The commission clarified that the list uploaded on the NMC website would itself serve as the valid document for counselling, ensuring that eligible PG seats are not lost due to administrative delays. Formal LoPs for the newly sanctioned seats, it said, will be issued shortly. Officials said the move is aimed at maximising seat utilisation while retaining regulatory oversight through the appeal mechanism. State medical education departments and counselling authorities have been instructed to act on the decision immediately. For thousands of PG aspirants, the approval offers additional opportunities at a time when competition for postgraduate medical seats remains intense.
