New Delhi: The National Medical Commission — the country’s apex regulatory body for medical education — has barred 38 medical colleges from admitting new MBBS students this year after it found them defaulting on several mandatory administrative standards, including maintaining faculty attendance records, top government sources told ThePrint Thursday.
A senior official from the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare told ThePrint on the condition of anonymity that in addition to these, 105 other colleges have also been identified for action, although notices have yet to be issued to them.
“These colleges (the 38 disbarred medical colleges) have the right to appeal within 30 days after setting their standards right,” the official said.
Sources said that the decision was taken after a detailed assessment by NMC’s Medical Assessment and Ratings Board found several administrative lapses in these colleges, among them irregularities in maintaining attendance records and inadequate security cameras.
The all-India assessment was conducted over several weeks earlier this year.
According to data from the Union health ministry, there are a total of 654 functional medical colleges and 99,763 MBBS seats in the country in the 2022-2023 academic year.
Among those colleges that have been disbarred by NMC are some recognised government institutions such as the Stanley Medical College in Chennai, the Indira Gandhi Medical College & Research Institute, Puducherry, the Assam Medical College, Dibrugarh, and the Gauhati Medical College and Hospital.
Government sources also said that at least seven medical colleges have already petitioned the Union health ministry against NMC’s decision.
But procedure demands that any decision taken by NMC must first be appealed to the council, Dr Rajive Sood, a member of the body, told ThePrint.
“A medical college first needs to appeal to the NMC itself and show that the deficiencies have been corrected. But if the NMC action continues, they can appeal to the ministry,” he said, adding that at several institutions, the practice of using Aadhaar-based biometric systems to register faculty attendance — an NMC mandate — was abandoned during the COVID-19 pandemic and has not be reinstated yet.
Dr.C.V.Bhirmanandham, who was vice-president of the erstwhile Medical Council of India — the apex regulator that the NMC replaced in 2020 — supported council’s action, telling the ThePrint that it was essential to maintain the standard of education in India’s medical institutions.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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