NMC to speed up NEET counselling with seat-approval calendar, allow for-profits to set up medical colleges

With both NEET counselling – the medical admissions process – and college approval process increasingly dragging on for months, keeping the aspirants anxious and eating into the academic session, the National Medical Commission (NMC) is looking to rein in the haywire schedule.

In another significant move, the commission has also decided to include once again for-profit companies among the entities permitted to set up medical colleges. The change in norms, which will likely be notified within a week, will reverse a barely two-year-old rule allowing only Section 8 or not-for-profit companies to run medical institutions.

At a recent meeting, NMC, the apex regulator for medical education and profession, discussed having a timetable in place to ensure the two interdependent activities – NEET UG counselling and NEET PG counselling – and the recognition of new institutes and seats at the existing ones – do not go on endlessly.

“We will issue a calendar and make the process time-bound. We are determined to address this delay,” a senior NMC official told Academia360.

Admissions at both central and state levels are based on the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test for Undergraduate and Postgraduate (NEET UG and NEET PG).

NEET counselling delays recurring

The prolonged medical admissions have become a recurring problem over the last few years, as the two bodies regulating medical education – NMC and the National Board of Examination in Medical Sciences (NBEMS) – take time revising, and re-revising, the seat matrix after every admission round by adding and removing the spots.

The choice-filling for the ongoing cycle of NEET PG counselling didn’t even begin until November 20 last year, more than three and a half months after the NEET PG was conducted on August 3. The test itself had to be postponed from its original scheduled date of June 15, after the Supreme Court (SC) asked the paper to be held in a single shift to make the evaluation fairer. So far, only two rounds of admissions have been completed, with the process expected to continue till the end of February.

The 2025 NEET UG counselling, too, began two and a half months after the May 3 NEET UG test and lasted for another four months. The counselling for other UG health science programmes – Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homeopathy (AYUSH), BDS, nursing and allied healthcare disciplines – continued even longer.

The constant shifting of NEET counselling deadlines and changes in seat arrangements had other cascading effects. For instance, many medical aspirants across the country lost an opportunity to participate in the third round of MBBS admissions, as they had already secured less-aspirational AYUSH seats. While AYUSH counselling rounds generally trail the MBBS rounds, allowing aspirants to first try their luck in medical colleges, a delay in the third round of medical admissions meant that the candidates had to either remain content with their AYUSH seats or risk losing both.

Another issue cropped up in Maharashtra, when 100 new UG seats were added to the state quota seat matrix after the completion of three regular rounds of NEET counselling. Many aspirants, who had obtained other seats, found it to be unfair to be deprived of these spots. They failed to get a reprieve from the Bombay High Court (HC), which decided not to disturb the existing allotments.

The delay in NEET PG counselling and admissions, on the other hand, has caused a strain on medical colleges that depend on resident doctors for their clinical workload.

NMC: For-profit firms can set up medical colleges

NMC has also announced that it is allowing all types of private companies, including for-profit ones, to establish medical colleges. This is being done to facilitate public private partnership (PPP) mechanism of establishing medical colleges. Under this system, the government provides a portion of the capital expenditure and land to a private firm to build a new medical college, which is leased to the private firm usually for a period of 30 years. In return, the management provides free or subsidised treatment to poor patients on a certain number of beds.

To effect this change, the regulator will amend a clause in the Establishment of Medical Institutions, Assessment and Rating Regulations of June 2023, that only allows Section 8 companies registered under the Companies Act 2013. It will restore a provision permitting all companies to open medical colleges, which was introduced in 2010 to the previous set of rules, the Establishment of Medical College Regulations, 1999, brought by NMC’s predecessor, the Medical Council of India (MCI).

Apart from companies, central and state governments, their autonomous bodies, universities and societies are the other entities that can set up medical colleges.

PPP medical colleges and ‘commercialisation’

The 2010 amendment, which added companies to the list, also provided for permission to be withdrawn from colleges resorting to “commercialisation”. It’s not clear whether a similar guardrail will be provided in the new rules, or whether there will be any explicit prohibition on college administration from profiting off of their educational activities.

However, the NMC official sought to assure that the state governments will be able to extend their reservations, fee and taxation-related regulations to the institutes set up by the private players.

“There will be control of the public sector. Eventually, [the restriction on profiteering] falls under the states’ ambit. They can impose their rules on state-level taxes, fee structure and state-level reservations,” said the official.

While NMC presently doesn’t have any plans to bring any nationwide fee norms, the official said that the central body is “sensitive” to the students’ concern about high fees at private medical colleges. “It may happen in the future, as there’s a request from the medical fraternity [to regulate the education cost]. But at this stage, there’s no active initiative as per my knowledge,” said the official.

The NMC Act 2019 empowers the regulator to frame guidelines to determine fees and other charges for half the seats at private medical colleges and deemed-to-be universities. The commission, in 2022, had issued guidelines determining the fees at private and deemed university colleges. However, these directives were challenged in the court, and the matter remains unresolved.