NMC eases medical college norms, removes MBBS seat cap

The National Medical Commission has revised its regulatory framework for medical education, introducing changes that ease restrictions on new colleges, course launches, and seat expansion while updating assessment norms.

A key amendment removes the cap that limited medical colleges to 150 MBBS seats, a restriction that had been in place since the 2024-25 academic year.

With this ceiling now lifted, institutions can increase undergraduate intake based on their infrastructure and capacity.

The commission has also eliminated the population-based criterion that required states and Union Territories to maintain 100 MBBS seats per 10 lakh people. Scrapping this rule gives states greater autonomy to determine seat numbers according to local demand and available resources.

Among other revisions, the NMC has updated guidelines governing the distance between medical colleges and their affiliated hospitals.

The earlier requirement of a maximum travel time of 30 minutes has been replaced with a fixed distance norm of 10 km. For North Eastern and Himalayan states, the permissible distance has been extended to 15 km.

Officials said the changes are intended to provide wider flexibility to institutions while supporting the expansion of medical education infrastructure across the country.

The amendments have been notified in the Extraordinary Gazette of India under the National Medical Commission Act, 2019.

They apply to the Undergraduate Medical Education Board’s guidelines under UG-MSR 2023 and Regulation 19 of the Graduate Medical Education Regulations, 2023, which were originally notified on Aug 16, 2023.