The dishonesty by some of the NMC Assessors, in shielding defaulting medical colleges can be described as a transaction driven farce, that risks the lives of patients and the trust placed in health care system. It has exposed a crisis of ethics and accountability in educational governance, the backbone of the implementation of medical system.
While different health schemes have been introduced by the Union and state governments to ensure that teeming millions get Medicare at cheaper rates, the recent crackdown by CBI on certain doctors, including Dr Jitu Lal R. Meena, former Joint Director, NMC, collecting bribes and colluding with the medical colleges lacking in infrastructure, has raised a question mark on the credibility of medical education in the country. These doctors were deputed by the National Medical Commission (NMC) to inspect certain medical colleges and hospitals as per routine practice. The National Medical Commission Act 2019 was passed to provide a medical education system that improves access to quality and affordable medical education, to ensure the availability of adequate high-quality medical professionals to promote equitable healthcare infrastructure.
The NMC seeks to ensure transparent assessment of medical institutions and facilitates the maintenance of a medical register for India to enforce high ethical standards in all aspects of medical services. It delegates senior faculty members from different government medical colleges across the country to conduct periodic inspections in the medical colleges and hospitals on its behalf. These Assessors are drawn from nationwide government medical colleges and assigned for inspections through a randomization process by the NMC. As per the act, the NMC seeks to ensure transparent assessment of medical institutions and facilitates the maintenance of a medical register for India to enforce high ethical standards in all aspects of medical services.
However, it has been revealed that some of these NMC Assessors take huge bribes to give a favorable report and ignore the defaults like absence of faculty, lack of infrastructure, and lack of patient care facilities in these medical colleges. Some of them have also been involved in giving advance intimation about the NMC inspection enabling defaulting medical colleges to make fraudulent arrangements, including the deployment of non-existent or proxy faculty ("ghost faculty"), tampering with the biometric attendance systems to falsify the presence of faculty, and the admission of fictitious patients during inspections.
Besides, certain officials of the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the NMC are being accused of accessing confidential data related to colleges, duplicating it, and passing it to defaulting colleges.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), New Delhi has named 36 people including Dr. J.L. Meena, Joint Director of the NMC, other doctors, and 11 officials of the Union Health Ministry and Family Welfare in its FIR No RC 2182025A0014 registered on June 30, 2025. The accused have been booked under sections 61(2) and 173 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (BNS) and sections 7,8,9,10, and 12 of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1988 (amended in 2018). Some of the doctors have been arrested.
Defaulting Colleges
Some of the defaulting colleges are: the Swami Narayan Institute of Medical Education, Kalol (Gujarat), Index Medical College, Indore (Madhya Pradesh), Shri Rawatpura Sarkar Institute of Medical Sciences and Research (SRSIMSR), Raipur (Chhattisgarh), Father Colombo Medical Institute, Warangal (Telangana), Shyamlal Chandrashekhar Medical College, Khagaria (Bihar), NCR Medical College, Noida(Uttar Pradesh) and Malwanchal University, Indore (Madhya Pradesh). The NMC has stopped renewal of under graduate and post graduate seats for the academic year 2025-2026 in these colleges.
The Accused
Those named by CBI in FIR are: Mayur Raval, Registrar, Geetanjali University, Udaipur, (Rajasthan), R Randeep Nair, Project Head, Techinfy Solutions Private Ltd (New Delhi), Shri Rawatpura Sarkar Institute of Medical sciences and Research (SRSIMSR), Raipur, (Chhattisgarh), Ravishankarji Maharaj, Chairman, SRSIMSR, Atul Kumar Tiwari, Director, SRSIMSR and Prof. D P Singh, Chancellor, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai (Maharashtra).
The long list includes: Dr Atin Kundu, Laxminarayan Chandrakar, and Sanjay Shukla both from the SRSIMSR, Dr Manjappa CN, Prof and Head of the Department, Orthopaedics, Mandya Institute of Medical Sciences, Bangalore (Karnataka) and Dr Chaitra M.S, Dr. P Rajini Reddy, and Dr Ashok Shelke…all members of the inspection team of the NMC.
The list of erring persons also includes: Ms Poonam Meena, Dharmavir, Piyush Malyan, Anup Jaiswal, Rahul Srivastava, Chandan Kumar, Deepak, and Ms Manisha…all officials of the Union Health Ministry. Dr Satish from Bangalore (Karnataka), Dr Virendra Kumar (Haryana), Dr Joshy Mathew (New Delhi), Dr B Hari Prasad, Ananthapur( Andhra Pradesh), and Dr Ankam Rambabu, Hyderabad (Telangana). Suresh Singh Bhadoria of Index Medical College, Indore(Madhya Pradesh), Indra Bali Mishra, Varanasi, and Udit Narayan, Kanpur (Uttar Pradesh),
Dr. Krishna Kishore, Akkayapalem, Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh), Venkat, Director, Gayatri Medical College, Visakhapatnam, Father Joseph Kommareddy of the Father Colombo Institute of Medical Sciences, Warangal ((Telangana), Ms Shivani Agarwal, Assistant Managing Director and Head of Radiology department, NCR Institute of Medical Sciences, Meerut (Uttar Pradesh) and Swami Bhaktavatsaldasji of Swami Narayan Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, Kalol, (Gujarat) also figure in the FIR.
Modus Operandi
The CBI in its FIR has described how the bribe money reached the beneficiaries through hawala transactions. To name a few: Dr B Hari Prasad of Ananthapur, Andhra Pradesh, collected Rs 50 lakhs from Venkat, Director of Gayatri Medical College, Visakhapatnam, to ensure favorable settlement of a matter pending before the NMC. He was also involved in arranging dummy faculty members and facilitating the issuance of Letters of Renewal and other regulatory approvals from the NMC. He along with Dr. Ankam Rambabu (Hyderabad) also allegedly collected Rs 20 lakh and Rs 46 lakh from Father Joseph Kommareddy of the Colombo Institute of Medical Sciences, Warangal (Telangana). A part of the amount was passed on to Dr Jitu Lal Meena, the then Whole Time member of the Medical Assessment and Rating Board (MARB) of the NMC.
Dr. B. Hari Prasad. While posing as a consultant to medical colleges, was engaged in unlawful activities such as arranging dummy faculty members for statutory inspections and facilitating the issuance of Letters of Renewal and other regulatory approvals from the authorities including NMC.
In another case Mayur Raval, Registrar, Geetanjali University, Udaipur (Rajasthan), demanded over Rs 25 lakh to give advance information about the inspection scheduled on June 30, 2025, in the SRSIMSR, Chhattisgarh. He passed on the information well in advance on June 26, 2025. He also divulged the names of all 04 members of the inspection team, who too conspired with Atul Kumar Tiwari, Director, SRSIMSR, to give a favorable report. The team members included Dr Manjappa and Dr Chaitra M.S.. The money was passed on through the hawala to these doctors.
In an earlier case Dr Tapan Kumar Jana, Head of Dept, Anatomy, Murshidabad Medical College and Hospital, Berhampore (West Bengal) was arrested by CBI in May this year on charges of collecting Rs 10 lakh to give a favorable report to the Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College (JNMC), Belgaum (Karnataka).
Availability of Doctors
As of now, the ratio of doctors is 1:811 and by 2030, at least 21 lakh doctors will be required to meet the demand of the ever-increasing population. The number of registered doctors in some of the states is: Maharashtra-209540, Tamil Nadu-149399, Karnataka-141155, and Rajasthan-49049. There are around 43,000 private and roughly 27,000 public hospitals. Yet the country faces a shortage of hospital beds, with a ratio significantly below the World Health Organization (WHO) recommendation. The country which has around 20 lakh hospital beds (12 lakh private, 08 lakh govt), needs an additional 24 lakh beds to reach the recommended ratio of 3 beds per 1,000 people.
NEET 2025
There are around 1,18,190 MBBS seats for which approximately 60,000 are in government colleges and nearly 58,000 seats in private colleges. In addition to MBBS, there are around 73157 Postgraduate seats across the country. By and large over 20 lakh students appear for the National Eligibility Cum Entrance Test (NEET) to seek admission every year. This year out of the 20.8 lakh students appeared, 12,36,531 total candidates qualified the NEET 2025 exam. Besides 1,18,190 MBBS seats, there will be around 27,868 seats of Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS).
There is a cut throat competition to seek admission to medical colleges with better infrastructure facilities. The KEM, LTMG and J.J Hospitals in Mumbai are the most preferred colleges. However due to the restricted number of MBBS seats, eventually the students shift to other streams of medicine like Dentistry, Homeopathy, and Ayurved or seek admission to foreign universities at a heavy cost.
Medical Colleges
Despite private medical colleges mushrooming in some parts of the country, their number lingers around 589 medical colleges and 64 standalone Post Graduate institutes. The qualifications of these colleges are recognized by the NMC. The colleges in some of the states are: Uttar Pradesh- 85, Maharashtra-68 (30 Govt, 24 Pvt, 01 AIIMS, 1 Central University, 12 Deemed Colleges) and Tamil Nadu- 64 and Karnataka- 61.
Andaman Nicobar Islands, Arunachal Pradesh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Goa, Mizoram, Nagaland, and Sikkim have 01 medical colleges each. Other states with a limited number of medical colleges include: Uttarakhand 06, Himachal Pradesh and Jharkhand 07 each, Puducherry 09, Chhattisgarh, Punjab and Delhi 10 each, Assam 13, Odisha 15 and Bihar 19. Resultantly the students are compelled to move to other states.
Other Streams of Medicine
The status of other streams of medical studies is: Bachelor of Homeopathic Medicine and Surgery(BHMS) (Alternative medicine)- 230 colleges (80 Private)-No of seats-19757. Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS)- 323 colleges (including 318 Govt colleges)- No.of seats- 26,773. Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery (BAMS): 560 colleges (number of seats 52520).
Crisis of Ethics
The dishonesty by some of the NMC Assessors can be described as a transaction-driven farce that risks the lives of patients and the trust placed in health care system. It has exposed a crisis of ethics and accountability in educational governance, the backbone of the implementation of medical system. Systematic reforms in college education and accreditation are required to ensure that the quality determines who will give training to future generations of doctors.