Letter to the Editor
We, a group of concerned parents of NEET-UG 2026 candidates from Meghalaya, wish to bring to public notice serious anomalies in the ongoing Combined Counselling process for MBBS Admissions 2026–27, conducted by the Directorate of Health Services (DHS).
It must be recognised at the outset that this year’s candidates have already been through an unusually gruelling ordeal even before reaching this stage. Many of our children sat through a re-NEET examination, followed by multiple rounds of counselling and re-counselling, each accompanied by its own uncertainty and anxiety. A number of them had also taken drop years — sacrificing a year or more of their young lives, often at considerable financial and emotional cost to their families — solely to prepare rigorously for this examination and secure a fair shot at a medical seat. Having endured all of this, our children deserved, at the very least, a transparent and consistent allotment process at the finish line. Instead, they have been met with confusion, shifting goalposts, and outcomes that are difficult to reconcile with merit.
We placed our full faith in the promise that seat allotment would be strictly merit-based, as laid down in the counselling SOP, which reserves State Quota seats as Khasi & Jaintia – 40%, Garo – 40%, UR – 15%, and SC/OST – 5%. What we have witnessed instead has left us deeply troubled.
Consider the case faced by several ST (Khasi & Jaintia) candidates this year — a pattern, we understand, that is not isolated but has affected many similarly placed families. By virtue of their high NEET scores, these candidates qualify not only for reserved K&J seats but also for the general UR merit list. Rather than benefiting from this dual eligibility, they are being called for choice-filling only under the UR category — often many cycles later than their true K&J rank would warrant. In one such instance, a candidate placed within the top ten of the ST (K&J) merit list was called several cycles later than his rightful turn would have warranted, and was consequently forced to choose from a far smaller pool of remaining seats — losing out to a candidate ranked well below him in the very same category. This is not a one-off grievance; several other parents have reported near-identical outcomes for their own children. What incentive remains for a child to score well, if a higher mark under one head only shrinks their choices under another?
Adding to this, the detailed SOP notified on 15 September 2026 was reportedly made public only on 16 September — the same day choice-filling was conducted. Our children were made to lock in life-defining decisions before they could even read the rules that governed those very decisions.
Separately, several families among us have raised concern over the re-counselling round itself. Candidates called under a batch system were often left with very few options by the time their turn arrived, and were consequently allotted seats far removed from their preference. In one such case, a candidate was allotted his top-choice college during re-counselling, only for the published results (Notification No. DHS/MER.150/MBBS Admission/2026-27/6101, dated 17 September 2026) to subsequently show the very same seat allotted to candidates with distinctly lower merit — a pattern several other parents recognise from their own children’s experience as well. We fail to understand how a seat once secured by a higher-ranked candidate on his top preference can pass to candidates ranked far below him, even within the same category.
What compounds our distress further is that, on the strength of the first list, some of our children took what they believed to be a sound and final decision. Having been allotted a college of their choice, several candidates voluntarily gave up seats they had already secured in other, often more prestigious, institutions elsewhere — including seats obtained through All India Quota or other state counselling processes — trusting that their allotment here was settled and dependable. The subsequent inconsistencies in the re-counselling round have now left several such families in a far worse position than if they had simply retained their earlier seat, with no fault of their own. A counselling process that induces students to surrender genuine opportunities elsewhere, only to then upend their own allotment through inconsistent re-counselling, causes harm that cannot easily be undone — a lost seat in another institution is rarely one that can be reclaimed.
We would also like to draw attention to a broader concern. The national counselling calendar this year — necessitated by the re-NEET examination — has already been compressed and repeatedly revised at the central level, leaving states with a shrinking window to conduct their own rounds. It is precisely in such compressed timelines that states are expected to exercise greater, not lesser, diligence in adhering to due process — ensuring that SOPs are finalised and published sufficiently in advance, that candidates are given a genuine and unhurried opportunity to exercise their choices, and that seat-allotment logic is applied consistently and is open to verification. A candidate’s right to make an informed choice, based on complete and timely information, is as fundamental to a fair admission process as merit itself, and cannot be treated as a mere formality to be rushed through to meet a closing date.
We would further urge the Department to consider the long-term implications of getting this process wrong. Medical admissions are not merely an administrative exercise — they determine who trains to become the doctors of tomorrow. An opaque or inconsistent allotment process does more than disappoint individual families; over time, it erodes public confidence in the fairness of the system, discourages genuinely meritorious students from investing years of preparation, and risks a mismatch between a candidate’s demonstrated ability and the institution they are trained at. These are not small costs. They bear directly on the quality of healthcare our state and country will have in the years ahead, and on whether talented young people continue to believe that hard work and merit are actually rewarded.
We do not write this letter out of disrespect for the counselling authorities or the reservation policy, which we recognise and support. Our concern is narrower and, we believe, entirely reasonable: that the mechanics of choice-filling and allotment must actually reflect the merit principle the SOP promises on paper. After all that this year’s candidates have already sacrificed — repeated examinations, repeated rounds, and in many cases an entire year of their youth — the least they deserve is a process that honours their merit rather than penalising it.
We appeal to the Health & Family Welfare Department, Government of Meghalaya, to:
Clarify without delay how ST candidates who also qualify for the UR list are to be treated during choice-filling;
Review the specific allotments that appear inconsistent with merit, including the cases cited above;
Ensure that any SOP or amendment is published well before, not during, the choice-filling exercise, and that the State’s counselling timeline leaves candidates adequate time to exercise informed choices, in keeping with the spirit of the national counselling schedule;
Put in place a transparent, verifiable mechanism for seat allotment that candidates and parents can trust;
Give due consideration to candidates who, relying in good faith on an earlier allotment, gave up seats secured elsewhere, and ensure they are not left worse off on account of subsequent inconsistencies in the process; and
Take corrective steps before the next round of seat allotment, so that no more children are made to pay the price for administrative haste, after everything they have already endured this year.
We hope this letter, published in your esteemed pages, will draw the attention of the concerned authorities and the wider public to an issue that affects not only the futures of individual candidates, but the long-term quality and credibility of medical education and healthcare in our state.
Yours sincerely,
Concerned Parents of NEET-UG 2026 Candidates, Shillong, Meghalaya
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