Admissions to all Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH) undergraduate courses across all states will be through NEET from 2018 onwards, a notification on the official website of the Karnataka Common Entrance Test (CET) has confirmed. The news of AYUSH being mandatory for NEET 2018 was already confirmed last year when the Ministry of AYUSH issued two notifications, in the months of January and April, informing all State Governments that admissions to BAMS, BHMS, BUMS, BSMS and BNYS will be done through the NEET merit list only from 2018 onwards. However, there was yet to be any official notification relased by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), the NEET conducting body, in this regard. With the notification released by the Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) on January 27, 2018, AYUSH aspirants finally know for sure now that they will have to appear in NEET 2018 to take admissions to the courses of their choice.

AYUSH in NEET

The AYUSH Ministry had first asked all states to hold admissions to these courses through the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) from 2017 itself. However, only a few states like Jammu and Kashmir, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Kerala among others were able to conduct AYUSH admissions through NEET last year. In April 2017, the Ministry of AYUSH released a final notification which stated that "Admission in AYUSH UG Courses shall be compulsorily through NEET merit list from Academic Year 2018-19". Ahead of the International Yoga Day celebrations on June 21, 2017, the Minister of State for AYUSH Shripad Yesso Naik also said, "The demand for Ayurveda, Homoeopathy, Naturopathy, Unani medicines and Yoga have increased worldwide and the number of students pursuing such courses have also risen. So there is a need to maintain standard of education in this stream". This revealed the Government’s intention to use NEET as a common standard test for entry into all types of medical courses apart from MBBS and BDS.

To read the notification released by the Ministry of AYUSH in April 2017, Click Here

Karnataka AYUSH notification

The KEA, which had been conducting the CET in Karnataka to determine admissions to AYUSH courses offered by colleges in the state, released a notification on January 27 stating that this will no longer be the case and interested candidates will have to apply for NEET to qualify. The notification states that “...the admissions to AYUSH courses in both Government and Private AYUSH colleges shall be made based on the rank in the NEET(...)from the academic year 2018-19”.

To see the notification issued by KEA with regard to AYUSH in NEET, check the image below:

The above notice also makes it clear that admissions to AYUSH courses in all states will be through NEET only from 2018-19 onwards. More than 11 lakh candidates had registered for NEET 2017 for applying to the 90,000 MBBS and BDS seats on offer. Now, with the inclusion of AYUSH courses, it can be expected that the number of applications will significantly increase once the CBSE releases the NEET 2018 application form in the coming days. Aspirants will also be able to confirm the inclusion of AYUSH course in NEET through the NEET 2018 prospectus which will also be released soon.