Quite Difficult in my opinion
The thing that makes NEET PG difficult is not the question but simply the amount of competition and fewer residency seats in good institution without Bond.
In a Recent NBE pattern paper a question just showed a image of clavicle ( collar bone) and asked to identify it. I feel even a class 11 student will be able to answer it. Majority of the questions are not difficult and could be solved with little application of medical knowledge with sincere efforts.
But the real difficulty comes when You really want to match to a Residency of Choice in the institution of choice.
There are sadly very few seats in good institution and few MCQ marked wrong due to silly mistake will cost you the seat. NEET PG is a competitive exam and you are competing with the best pool of Young Doctors who are highly motivated.
Extremely less number of seats: In Kolkata there are MCK, IPGMER, National, NRS, RG Kar , ESI, joka, Sagor dutta which are government medical colleges that offer MBBS Program. The colleges I mentioned all are quite old and few of them are offering MBBS program now more then 100 Years.Total combined strength of the mentioned medical colleges is 1250 MBBS Seats.
RG Kar which runs one of the finest programs for Surgery does not offer any MD Radiology. Out of the list I mentioned only 3 institution offer MD Radiology with combine strength of 21 seats and all institution lacks some facilitates. None of them give you complete package.
To give example MCK does not have it’s own CT and MRI machine but is the only instution to have a DSA unit. The limited amount of seats are then again divided in multiple parts and in reality only few seats remain open for general candidates. In few specialties seats are as low as One seat all India.
All this things really don’t matter when you are preparing for NEET but becomes extremely important after results as you realize there are very few institution that actually worth your efforts. There is also bond which you need to pay after you pass MD/ MS. In West Bengal its 30 Lakhs/ 3 years and strictly implemented.
Competition: My senior who had AIR 27 in AIIMS November which is excellent rank by any standard yet he did not make it to AIIMS, Delhi for General Medicine as there are just not enough seats. Even though AIIMS does not reveal the marks scored by the participants yet it is reasonably safe to assume the difference in marks scored by AIR 1 and AIR 27 may not be huge though the quality of training between AIIMS Delhi and AIIMS Bhubaneswar certainly varies drastically.
With ever increasing MBBS seats and sadly most hospitals neither having a good MBBS program or MD program, things really become quite difficult.
So if NEET PG was a qualifying exam, I would had rated it moderate in difficulty but as a competitive exam I would rate it Very Hard specially if you are average general category candidate who want to match to the specialty of your choice, in a good college and believe me you can count those good colleges on your finger tips as so less are there.
I sincerely hope at least quality of training should be equalized pan India. Excuses like Mr X ranked more so he must get better training compared to Mr Y should not be used to hide from the fact that majority of the hospitals lack facilities to run the residency program.
Thank You