India’s apex medical education regulator, the National Medical Commission, has released new rules aimed at standardising the application process to start new medical colleges or increase seats in existing institutions, dealing with ghost faculty, and ensuring the quality of undergraduate and postgraduate medical programmes. These Medical Assessment and Rating Board guidelines come into effect from the next academic year (2024-25).
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The guidelines, published this week, outline the procedure to establish new medical colleges and increase seats in existing colleges, including details of the assessment process, application fee, accreditation process, sanctions and penalties, redressal, and appeal procedures, among others.
The latest guidelines have been prepared by the NMC Board based on the revised Graduate Medical Education Regulations, 2023 and the Undergraduate Minimum Standard Requirements, 2023.
Biometric attendance
In a bid to crack down on ghost faculty, an Aadhaar-enabled biometric attendance system (AEBAS) registration has been made compulsory for faculty before inspection. The guidelines make it clear that any deficiency found in the application submitted by the medical colleges at any point of time during the ongoing process will result in their applications being rejected. It adds that physical inspection does not provide any immunity to the medical colleges with respect to any deficiency in the applications or AEBAS data.
“The daily AEBAS of the required staff (faculty, residents and supporting staff), preferably along with face-linked recognition shall be made available to NMC as well as on the medical college website in the form of daily attendance dashboard,” the guidelines say, adding that the AEBAS attendance of registered faculty for ten working days prior to (and including) the date of inspection will be an essential criteria to be taken into consideration during the inspection.
‘Implementation is key’
A number of students have been appealing to the NMC to urgently intervene and transfer them from medical colleges that they claim are not even offering the basic standard of education. Parents of such students appreciated the new guidelines, but noted that even the best laws are often implemented poorly.
A parent group, which has appealed for help to transfer their children from Chintpurni Medical Colleges, Punjab, due to substandard education, said: “We have seen that usually the penalties, redressals and appeals provisions are in favour of the private medical education lobby. It suits them most but is very harsh on government medical colleges.”
