The Centre has constituted a high-powered committee headed by the Director General of Health Services (DGHS) to formulate a mechanism for conducting a comprehensive audit of the existing system of admission through the NEET-PG examination, the Supreme Court was informed on Tuesday.During the hearing on petitions challenging the reduction in the percentile cut-off for NEET-PG 2025, Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Aishwarya Bhati told a bench led by Justice PS Narasimha that the government has constituted a 12-member panel headed by the DGHS through a notification dated July 23.The terms of reference of the panel will be to formulate the mechanism for internal audit of the existing system of admissions through NEET, to identify the lacunae in the existing system and to find implementable and practical solutions for the same, the ASG submitted.Giving eight weeks to the panel to file its report, the bench said it would examine if the sharp reduction in the qualifying marks for NEET-PG 2025-26 affected the standard of postgraduate medical education.The panel may co-opt members from the National Commission for Indian System of Medicine (NCISM) and National Commission for Homeopathy (NCH), it said.The petitioners have challenged the January 13 notice issued by the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS), by which the minimum qualifying percentile cut-off for counselling of the third round of NEET-PG 2025-2026 was reduced.Concerned about quality of medical education, the Supreme Court had on February 23 said it would examine the adverse impact of unusual reduction in the NEET-PG 2025 cut-off even as the Centre asserted that the examination did not certify minimum clinical competence since candidates were already doctors having obtained MBBS degree.“It’s about the quality. You (Centre) will have to satisfy us that the reduction of the cut-off so drastically. will have little impact on the quality of education,” Justice Narasimha had said.On February 6, the bench had directed Centre to explain the rationale behind the decision. “We were stunned to see why this method was adopted. These are all regular doctors…This is about standards. The question is whether those standards are being compromised,” it had said.Under the revised criteria categories for admission to NEET-PG 2025-26, the cut-off score for the General Category and EWS is 103 (down from 276 earlier) while for General PwBD the score was lowered from 255 to 90. For the SC/ST/OBC category, the revised cut-off is minus 40 (earlier 235).