NMC Mandates Doctor Re-Registration Amid Missing Records
The National Medical Commission (NMC) is urging over 11 lakh doctors across India to update their credentials on the National Medical Register. However, the regulatory body faces criticism for failing to record thousands of new practitioners who enter the workforce every year.
Discrepancies in National Medical Register Updates
Consequently, official records display a significant discrepancy between medical college output and actual national entries. With more than 91,000 MBBS seats open in the 2020-21 academic session, at least 68,000 graduates should have registered in 2025. Yet, the national registry captured only about 44,400 new entries during that period. Therefore, at least 24,000 recent domestic graduates are missing from central records. Furthermore, over 10,000 foreign medical graduates passed qualifying examinations in 2023. These international graduates completed mandatory internships to seek registration by 2025. Thus, roughly 80,000 total medical graduates should have entered the database, but authorities logged barely 55% of them.
Lagging State Council Synchronisation
In addition, state medical councils continue to face major integration bottlenecks with the central portal. Section 31 of the NMC Act, 2019, explicitly mandated real-time electronic synchronisation between state and national registries. However, this national synchronisation remains incomplete six years after the constitution of the commission. State medical councils routinely send verified lists of newly licensed physicians each year. Nevertheless, central registries fail to reflect these new entries promptly. For example, Assam Medical Council registered nearly 890 doctors locally in 2024, yet the central database shows zero entries for that year. Similarly, Kerala records show only seven entries for 2025 despite producing thousands of medical graduates annually.
Administrative Burden Versus Automated Integration
Meanwhile, healthcare professionals have voiced concern over the mandatory re-registration process. Instead of automated deduplication of state databases, the commission has placed the burden of manual re-registration on doctors. If the regulator had captured only new practitioners over the past five years, it would already cover over 3.5 lakh verified clinicians. Therefore, medical leaders suggest integrating existing state databases directly rather than demanding repetitive paperwork from senior clinicians.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1: What is the primary objective of the National Medical Register?
The National Medical Register serves as a centralised, dynamic electronic repository linking doctor credentials with unique identifiers to ensure practice authenticity across India.
Q2: Why are new medical graduates missing from the central registry?
New graduates are missing because the commission has not completed technical synchronisation between state medical council registries and the central database.
Q3: How many doctors does the NMC aim to re-register?
The commission aims to re-register approximately 11 lakh modern medicine practitioners across various states.
References
- NMC pushes old doctors to re-register, but can’t net new ones - ETHealthworld
- National Medical Commission proposes single licence for doctors to practise across India - The Hindu
- NMC draft proposes mandatory NMR registration, doctors raise implementation concerns - Medical Dialogues
