NMC stresses need for Aadhaar-based biometric attendance for medical college faculty

As part of efforts to weed out "ghost faculty" in medical colleges, the NMC has reiterated the importance of Aadhaar-enabled biometric attendance system (AEBAS) for faculty members before inspection.

The National Medical Commission (NMC) has been repeatedly asking medical colleges to implement the AEBAS.

The Commission has come out with Medical Assessment and Rating Board guidelines aimed at standardising the application process to start new medical colleges or increase seats in existing institutions and dealing with ghost faculty among others.

The new rules will come into effect from the next academic year, the apex medical education regulatory body said.

"The daily AEBAS of the required staff (faculty, residents and supporting staff), preferably along with face-linked recognition shall be made available to the NMC as well as on the medical college website in the form of daily attendance dashboard," the guidelines said.

In a notice issued along with the guidelines, the NMC said that the Post Graduate Medical Education Board has decided to follow a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to be implemented with immediate effect for purpose of evaluating examination process as a part of inspection for recognition/recognition against increased intake/renewal of recognition of course of a qualification.

The medical colleges/ institutes will conduct examination according to the guidelines given in the PGMER in vogue and will keep a video record of the exam process and all relevant data about the examiners, examination process, details of the cases kept for the examination, thesis of the students etc.

Henceforth, there will not be physical or online inspection of examination process and universities can go ahead with conduct of examination according to schedule, the notice read.

Physical assessment of the medical colleges/ institutes will be done after the examination is over and will assess the college regarding the infrastructure, clinical material, investigative material and other facilities and examination details as mentioned above, it said.