The National Medical Commission (NMC), the apex medical education regulator in India, released the MARB (Medical Assessment and Rating Board) guidelines.
The guidelines were published on the NMC’s official website on Thursday, November 16, to standardise the process of the filling applications for new medical colleges and increasing seats for undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) courses in India.
The guidelines discuss various factors related to the procedure of establishing new medical colleges or increasing seats in existing colleges including the assessment process, application fee, stepwise process for accreditation, sanctions and penalties, redressal and appeal procedures, and more.
Highlights
The guidelines released by the NMC establish that in case of the establishment of a new medical college, Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance System (AEBAS) registration for the faculty should be complete before inspection. AEBAS attendance of registered faculty for ten working days prior to (and including) the date of inspection will be essential criteria to be taken into consideration during the inspection.
The NMC had made it mandatory for all medical colleges to install AEBAS to be linked to the Command-and-Control centre of NMC, as per guidelines released in August 2023.
Moreover, for existing colleges applying for new undergraduate or postgraduate courses in 2024-25, the MARB guidelines add that the colleges should have adequate faculty for existing UG and PG courses.
The guidelines further add that colleges seeking an increase in seats for admission, shall have admitted batches fulfilling all the criteria for the number of seats admitted for the preceding academic year and also shall be fulfilling all the requirements for an increase in seats.
Colleges seeking an increased number of seats cannot exceed a total of 150 MBBS students from the year 2024-25.
The document released by the NMC also includes a code of conduct for the assessors and the procedure for assessor selection.
