Thiruvananthapuram: Shashi Tharoor, Member of Parliament from Thiruvananthapuram, has publicly criticised the unavailability of NEET-PG 2025 exam centres in Kerala, calling it unfair and burdensome to local candidates.

In a tweet addressed to BJP president JP Nadda and Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, Tharoor said that Kerala-based aspirants were unable to select any city within the state as their test centre due to seats being exhausted within minutes of the portal reopening.

He emphasised that the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS), which conducts the exam, already had data on the number of Kerala applicants and should have made adequate arrangements. Tharoor urged an immediate intervention to authorise more centres in Kerala to avoid causing further “distress, inconvenience, and financial burden”.

Meanwhile, the NEET-PG 2025 exam has been postponed from its original date of 15 June to 3 August, following a Supreme Court directive mandating a single-shift exam to ensure fairness. This came after student groups challenged the NBEMS’s decision to hold the exam in multiple shifts, citing variations in question paper difficulty and a non-transparent normalisation process.

The delay, while legally driven, has triggered an outcry from students and experts, who argue that NBEMS had ample time to prepare for a single-shift format and failed to act. Medical education activist Brijesh Sutaria described the delay as deeply disruptive, noting that many students had quit jobs, paused internships, or incurred high expenses to prepare for the original schedule. The postponement, he said, has extended their mental and financial toll unnecessarily.

Candidates expressed frustration over having to reschedule study plans and extend costly subscriptions to coaching services. Many also decried the lack of empathy and foresight from the NBEMS in ignoring last year’s similar complaints, which had affected in-service quota students.

Education counsellors, meanwhile, acknowledged that while coaching centres stand to benefit commercially from the delay, they were not responsible for the legal challenge. They stressed that the real problem lies with the NBEMS's failure to adapt to student feedback proactively.

With the counselling process expected to start in August and go on till the end of the year—similar to last year—aspirants now face an uncertain and prolonged waiting period. Many say this uncertainty is affecting their ability to focus and prepare meaningfully.

The controversy around NEET-PG 2025 highlights broader issues in India’s medical education infrastructure—ranging from inadequate exam planning and centre allocation to mental health neglect and regional accessibility imbalances.