Chennai: Thousands of Indian doctors continue to wait — with completed internships and idle stethoscopes — as the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences is yet to open registrations for NEET PG 2026, the national entrance test for postgraduate medical admissions.The delay, nearly two months behind last year’s April 17 start, leaves the exam tentatively fixed for Aug 30, pushing counselling and admissions well into late 2026 or beyond.Admissions to super-speciality courses — cardiology, neurology, urology, cardiac surgery, and neurosurgery — remain on hold following a legal dispute over seat-sharing. “It looks like we will have overlapping schedules for admissions to all medical courses and allied health sciences this year,” said a senior official at Tamil Nadu’s directorate of medical education. NEET UG is awaited, and MBBS counselling alone typically takes three to four months after results, she said. If the PG exams are scheduled in Aug, results will be expected in Sept and counselling is expected in Oct or Nov.For doctors preparing to enter PG programmes, the uncertainty is grinding. Many take a two to three-year break from clinical work to prepare. “It is important to get the course of my choice even if I don’t get it in the college of my choice,” said Dr S Aruna, a postgraduate aspirant. “We lose clinical skills in the process, but the system leaves us no alternative.”Medical educators say the delay is not a one-off failure but a recurring pattern. In 2025, counselling ran six months behind schedule in May, leaving govt hospitals running on two resident batches instead of the standard three. “Postgraduates are not just students — they are the workforce of a teaching hospital,” said the dean of a government medical college. “Wards were stretched thin, while senior residents and faculty members were pressed into filling gaps.”Doctors’ associations warn that the cumulative toll is now unsustainable. With funds tight and staff short, they say public hospitals — which depend most on resident doctors as frontline staff — are bearing the heaviest burden.
