
Are medical colleges in India flouting the Minimum Standard Requirements laid out by the National Medical Commission (NMC)?
On August 16, 2023, the NMC introduced the "Guidelines for Under Graduate Courses under Establishment of New Medical Institutions, Starting of New Medical Courses, Increase of Seats for Existing Courses & Assessment and Rating Regulations, 2023", or the Minimum Standard Requirements that each medical college in India is mandated to follow to start operating or have its license renewed.
These guidelines lay clear instructions on the infrastructure, equipment and staff (both teaching and technical) each college must have, including the number of hospital beds, staff and faculty members in each department, and biometrics based on Aadhaar, and patient inflow for training the students.
However, many from the medical field in India are alleging that colleges are not only flouting these norms but also finding ways to evade penalties from the NMC for doing so.
One such medical college is the Shri Rawatpura Sarkar Institute of Medical Sciences and Research in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, alleges Dr Namani Sathyanarayana, an Assistant Professor of Anatomy in the college.
Ghost faculty, pre-informed inspections and silicon fingerprintsIn a letter to the NMC, which is now being widely shared on social media, Prof Satyanarayana claims that none of the doctors attended their duties regularly, nor did the college mandate regular attendance. “Unbeknownst to us, the college took our declarations, presenting us as full-time faculty members to NMC without any intention of having us perform actual duties,” he wrote.
Prof Dr Satyanarayana further alleges that 90 per cent of the faculty in the college were hired solely for NMC’s surprise inspections, and only 5 per cent of them would be present in the college on the odd day. They were only required to attend college on the day of their joining, to give their thumbprint impressions, he says.
He adds that the college then uses these fingerprints to falsely mark their attendance, writing, “It has come to our notice that the management uses these thumb impressions to create fake silicon fingerprints, which are then used for daily AEBAS (Automated Electronic Biometric Attendance System) attendance records.”
Most shocking among his allegations, however, is that the college gets informed about NMC inspections in advance. He narrates an incident where the doctors employed in the college were told on June 16 to be present in the college on June 19 for an inspection — which ended up getting cancelled.
He claims that they were then told on June 25 to attend an inspection that took place on June 28, in which the inspection team, comprised of one inspector from Haryana and two from Maharashtra gave the college a positive review in exchange for “substantiated bribes”.
The college also brought in people to pretend to be patients in the hospital during the inspections for Rs 1,000 each, he alleges.
Further, he claims that the college uses the thumbprints taken from the doctors to create fake silicon fingerprints, which are then used to update the Automated Electronic Biometric Attendance System (AEBAS) records to make it look like there is full attendance every day.
The professor further claims that the college administration is not releasing them from the AEBAS system, prohibiting them from joining any other college. Moreover, he adds that the doctors are being threatened by the administration against complaining and that their salaries are being withheld.
“The manipulation of the inspection process, aided by the inspectors’ willingness to overlook critical deficiencies, has led to a significant breach of trust in the regulatory framework. We were astounded and deeply concerned upon discovering that the college had been granted the Letter of Permission (LOP) by NMC for 150 MBBS seats for the year 2024-25 as a new establishment,” he further writes, requesting the NMC to look into the matter urgently.
He also promised to move the Supreme Court of India in case the NMC didn’t respond.
Many such cases?Responding to the letter, many from India’s medical fraternity said that the alleged malpractices are commonplace in most medical colleges, and are an open secret.
According to a report by Mint which was published on June 9, almost 80 per cent of the medical colleges in India do not meet the NMC’s Minimum Standard Requirements. These colleges were imposed penalties from Rs 10 lakh to Rs 50 lakh by the NMC, the report further says.
“We see this happening in colleges where we are employed,” says Dr Shashank Kambali, President, The MSc Medical Association. He adds that a lot of colleges hire ghost faculty. “On paper, the colleges are staffed with qualified doctors, but if you visit them, they look deserted,” he adds.
Dr Kambali further alleges that in the absence of full-time MD (Doctor of Medicine) faculty, several duties are imposed on medical MSc teachers. “Despite not being treated on par with teachers with MD degrees, we are made to run these colleges. We also don’t get paid extra for this, and are exploited like bonded labour,” he laments.
Such corruption could have serious implications on the quality of medical education and doctors in the country, says Dr Sharad Agarwal, President, Indian Medical Association (IMA).
“It is no secret that the NMC has been approving new medical colleges without making efforts to hire sufficient staff for them. If these allegations are indeed true, it would appear as if the NMC is overlooking corruption to make it look like there is enough faculty in medical colleges,” he says.
To solve the problem of ghost faculty, Dr Agarwal suggests that the NMC make it mandatory for all medical colleges to send in the payslips of each faculty member every month, to ensure more transparency in hiring.
He also suggests that the NMC should also issue an ordinance to medical colleges, saying that it has the final authority on approving faculty resignations.