Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) has notified a bill to amend the National Medical Commission (NMC) Act. 2019, which will pave the way for setting up a new board for medical entrance examinations, among others.
Called ‘National Medical commission (Amendment) Bill,2022’, it proposes an autonomous board, ‘Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences’, which, when comes to effect, will be responsible for holding the NExT exam.
NExT exam is a replacement for NEET PG.
The ministry has also invited comments on the draft bill within 30 days.
Currently, the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS) is responsible for holding exams like NEET PG, FMGE, NEET SS.
About NExT exam
The proposed NExT exam will serve as an entrance test for admission to postgraduate medical courses, a licentiate exam to practice modern medicine, a common qualifying final-year MBBS exam, and a screening test for foreign medical graduates. Thus it will substitute exams like NEET PG and FMGE.
In a separate notification related to draft regulations for NExT, the National Medical Commission said the test will be held in two stages: NExT step 1 and NeXT step 2.
NExT step 1 will be a centralized common all India examination of multiple-choice questions, and NExT Step 2 will be a Practical/Clinical and Viva Voce examination covering seven clinical subjects/disciplines, NMC said.
There is no restrictions to the number of attempts for the NExT exam, however, a medical student must complete both steps of the test within 10 years of joining the MBBS course, it added.