NEW DELHI: Medical colleges applying for establishment from 2024 will not be allowed to induct more than 150 MBBS students. Existing colleges seeking to increase their seats will not be allowed to exceed the cap of 150 students from 2024-25.
This will entail a 40 per cent cut in the upper limit of 250 MBBS students medical colleges are currently allowed to admit.
As per the existing National Medical Commission (NMC) norms of 2020, medical colleges are established with an annual intake of 100 or 150 seats and this intake can gradually be increased to 150, 200 and 250. But this won’t be the case from 2024 with India’s apex medical education regulator finalising fresh norms that propose a series of sweeping reforms including mandatory Aadhaar-based facial recognition of doctors and staff, minimum 75 per cent annual attendance requirement for all doctors, a new department of integrative medicine research and a child care centre for medical specialists and staff. The latest norms also say a new college cannot come up within 15 km of an existing one.
The ‘National Medical Commission (Minimum Standard Requirements for Establishment of New Medical Colleges and Increase of Seats in MBBS Course) Draft Regulations, 2023’, opened for stakeholder consultations for 30 days, today state: “After Academic Year 2023-24, letter of permission for starting of new medical colleges shall be issued only for annual intake capacity of 50/100/150 seats, provided no medical college exists in that geographical area covering a population of 10 lakh and above.
While issuing the essentiality certificate, state governments and UTs are required to ensure coverage of minimum 10 lakh population for 100 MBBS seats and also ensure minimum distance of 15 km between two medical colleges.” The new guidelines make it mandatory for colleges to have 24 departments including a new department of integrative medicine for the convergence of contemporary medicine with India’s ancient and traditional medical practices.
NMC makes it “desirable” for colleges to have a yoga department with one male and female instructor each to be hired by the institution. Further, all institutions from 2024 would need to install Aadhaar-enabled biometric attendance system as NMC attempts to weed out fake faculty and staff.
“All medical colleges and institutions shall install AEBAS which will be linked to command and control centre of NMC. The daily AEBAS along with face-linked recognition of the required staff (faculty, residents and supporting staff) will be made available to NMC and also on the institution website in the form of daily attendance dashboard,” state the new guidelines, which seek to supersede the 2020 norms currently in operation. The fresh rules also make a minimum of 75 per cent attendance on all working days (excluding vacations) mandatory for faculty and resident doctors and mandate child care centre for infants and children of staff at the hospital and the college.
In new flexibilities, the NMC has allowed colleges to come up on two campuses instead of one as is the requirement at present. “The walking distance between the two campuses should not be more than 30 minutes,” it adds.
The bed requirement for a teaching hospital at a medical college has also been reduced from 300 to 220. Also new colleges will be allowed to offer 60 per cent books as hard copies and the remaining in electronic format, which is not the case at present. Norms for lecture theatres and teaching rooms remain the same as in the NMC’s 2020 guidelines for colleges.