New guidelines for MBBS admission withdrawn without explanation

Less than a fortnight after issuing new rules, the National Medical Commission (NMC) has withdrawn guidelines under the Graduate Medical Education Regulations (GMER) 2023, without providing clarification for such a hasty step, creating confusion among students.

While the revocation raises questions on how and in what way the absence of the new guideline will impact the MBBS admission process in 2023, there is no explanation, neither from the NMC nor the Union health ministry.

The NMC on June 23 issued a circular revoking the guidelines that, among other things, provided a contour of competency-based medical education, set a window for admission in MBBS courses in colleges and clarified the admission criteria for students under the disability category.

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Since the guideline specifying the admission window of August 1 to 30 stands withdrawn, there is confusion among the student community on admission in the current academic year.

“The guidelines have been withdrawn without explaining the problems,” said Rohan Krishnan, an orthopaedic surgeon at Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi, and chairman of the Federation of All India Medical Association.

Among other things, GMER 2023 sought the removal of supplementary batches for students who failed their annual exams. One of the key points highlighted in the 82-page guidelines was if a candidate fails the supplementary examination for the first year of MBBS, he/she shall join the batch of the next academic/subsequent year.

The withdrawal comes at a time when more than 1,07,000 undergraduate medical seats in over 700 colleges are to be filled by the candidates who have cleared the all-India NEET examination. This has created confusion and anxiety among the students and their parents.

Other areas that were covered by the guidelines were manpower requirements in medical research, family adoption programme and formats for submission of information on admission.

On the day the guidelines were withdrawn, the NMC released drafts of three separate regulations seeking public comments.

The new draft regulations are on the maintenance of standards of medical education, minimum standard requirements for the establishment of new medical colleges and, competency-based medical education curriculum.