New Delhi- Senior Indian Revenue Service officer Nethrapal has issued a strong rebuttal to the circulating claims that reserved category candidates in the NEET PG 2025 exam are securing seats with negative scores of -40 out of 800 marks. In his analysis shared via social media and a detailed analysis, Nethrapal describes this as a "fake narrative" propagated by prominent politicians, media houses, and newspapers across India.

He emphasizes that the low qualifying cutoff applies only to a narrow set of circumstances and does not reflect the actual performance or selections of Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST), and Other Backward Class (OBC) students. Instead, his review of rank data shows these candidates dominating top positions and competing effectively in high-demand clinical branches.

Nethrapal points out that the uproar stems from the revised qualifying percentiles announced by the National Board of Examinations, where the threshold for reserved categories dropped to the 0th percentile, equating to around -40 marks. However, he clarifies that this figure is misleading because it pertains exclusively to non-clinical courses with little to no applicant interest, such as biochemistry.

In these subjects, seats often remain vacant due to low demand, prompting private medical colleges to push for lower cutoffs to ensure full enrollment and revenue. "The mischief of the negative cutoff is for non-clinical courses where there is no demand and nobody wants to enrol in courses like Biochemistry," Nethrapal states in his post. He stresses that this does not translate to reserved students filling prime seats with subpar scores; rather, actual allocations in competitive fields tell a different story.

Delving into the rank lists, Nethrapal highlights the strong showing of reserved candidates at the highest levels. "The fact remains there are multiple toppers within Top 100 from the reserved communities," he notes, underscoring that these students are not relying on relaxed standards but earning their places through high marks.

For instance, in sought-after specialties like radiology and general medicine at premier institutions such as Madras Medical College, reserved candidates are securing open category seats alongside general applicants. This means they are outperforming or matching general category peers on merit alone, without invoking reservation benefits. Nethrapal's examination of counseling data reveals no instances of negative scores leading to selections in these branches; instead, closing ranks demand scores in the 500-700 range across categories. "In AIIMS we found negligible difference in marks between reserved and general merit students ", he stated.

Reduced cutoffs are given to help the private medical colleges to fill up all their seats. Lower the cutoff, the greater is the fees the medical colleges can demand. "Remember the fees demanded are to the tune of Rs 1 crore and many a times many kids cannot afford such high fees from the reserved category. As a result, to fill the seats in non clinical courses and non affordability of seats gets the cutoff very low," he clarifies.

So, clearly negative cutoffs and lowering of cutoffs are offshoot of low demand courses and not high demand courses. The second reason is high fees. So reasons are multiple and from the above data it is clear that hardworking SC,ST,OBC kids are getting into these top colleges and top courses.

Nethrapal directly accuses media and political figures of fueling division by amplifying the -40 figure without context. He calls on them to retract their reports, arguing that such coverage spreads lies and undermines public trust. "Many prominent politicians, media houses, newspaper have published this issue," he writes, adding that the narrative ignores realities like candidates scoring even 440 marks failing to secure government seats in past cycles. In one response, he challenges critics by asking, "What if in non clinical courses general cut off is -10 and reserved cutoff is -20 will you accept this. Does it signify merit?" This, he says, exposes the selective outrage aimed at discrediting reservations rather than addressing systemic issues like the proliferation of private seats.

Nethrapal urges supporters of equity to amplify factual data. He specifically appeals to Bahujan media outlets to use key points from his analysis such as the top-100 reserved toppers and open-merit wins in clinical branches to counter misinformation.

"Bahujan media share this widely and also make news using the key data points published and counter all such news," he advises. His goal is to protect the morale of dedicated students from marginalized backgrounds, reminding everyone that "not all GC are 99%ile and not all SC ST are 0%ile."

Expressing her disappointment over the fake narrative controversy, anti caste activist Rehna Raveendran writes, " Caste Hindus forced the closure of Vaishno Devi Medical College, because of the NEET admission of Muslim students. They are now opposing the NEET admission of SC/ST/OBC through their false propaganda. Caste Hindus are systematically targeting young students belonging to SC/ST/OBC/and minorities. Shame." In another post, she states," They remain silent on how doctors from General Category play with human lives across the country, because their target is SC, ST and OBC for the obvious reason of caste. Merit isn't their agenda, caste is their target."