NMC removes population cap for setting up medical colleges in India

The National Medical Commission has scrapped population-based restrictions and enrolment caps on medical colleges, enabling expansion of MBBS seats. The reform also revises hospital distance norms, marking a significant policy shift aimed at easing growth in medical education.

Hyderabad: In a regulatory overhaul that promises to open up more opportunities for States, especially Southern States, to add more medical colleges, the National Medical Commission (NMC) has withdrawn the controversial population-linked restrictions on the establishment and expansion of medical colleges.

The amendment, published in the Gazette of India on April 27, is a major policy reversal and removes the restrictive requirement that medical colleges must adhere to a ratio of 100 MBBS seats per 10 lakh population.

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The NMC move is expected to provide relief to Southern States, which had argued that the population-based cap (restriction on medical seats) unfairly penalised regions with advanced healthcare systems and discouraged further investment in medical education.

In a further boost to medical education, the NMC also removed the enrollment ceiling that previously prevented colleges from exceeding a total of 150 MBBS students when seeking to increase their intake. The removal of this restrictive clause will allow established institutions to scale up their capacity based on institutional merit and demand rather than arbitrary enrollment caps.

The NMC notification introduces a much-needed logistical standard for the location and distance between medical colleges and their affiliated hospitals. The previous requirement of a “30-minute travel time” between a medical college and its affiliated hospital has been replaced with a distance-based rule, with maximum distance now fixed at 10 km for most regions.

In regions with difficult terrain, the limit has been extended to 15 km for states in the North-Eastern region and the Himalayan belt.