Doctors Say 'No' to NMR? RTI Exposes abysmal state of National Medical Register
National Medical Register
New Delhi: Even though eight months have passed since the National Medical Register (NMR) was launched, NMC has till now received only 10,411 applications for doctors' registration on NMR, revealed the data obtained through a recent Right to Information (RTI) application.
Further, NMC's response to the RTI application filed by Dr. KV Babu revealed that among these 10,411 applications, till date, 10,237 applications have not been approved, and these also include 139 applications where a query was raised. The Commission also informed that altogether 02 applications have been rejected so far.
Earlier this year, the Union Minister of State for Health Smt Anupriya Patel informed the Parliament that India has altogether 13,86,150 registered allopathic doctors. Therefore, less than 1% of the registered doctors have so far applied for their registration on NMR. On the other hand, 10237 out of 10411 applications- meaning 98.32% of applications for NMR registration have not been approved yet.
Commenting on this, Dr. KV Babu, a health activist from Kerala, who filed the RTI, told Medical Dialogues, "NMC should understand the implications of 98% non approval of the applications and just more than 10,000 applicants of over 13 lakhs Indian doctors have even applied for the registration in about 8 months time. More the number of applications are non-approved, less the number of new applications! The situation was brought to the attention of the NMC chairman in October 2024 itself. Instead of rectifying the mistake, NMC is continuing the ineffective method of NMR registration & this will be a disaster."
NMR is a dynamic database and will be a central repository of all registered doctors, in which their authenticity is verified by Aadhaar IDs. All the MBBS doctors who are registered on Indian Medical Register (IMR) have to register again on the NMR, the NMC said in a public notice recently, and added that all medical colleges/institutions, state medical councils (SMCs) are inter-linked on the portal.
Launching the NMR portal on 23.08.2024, the Apex Medical Commission has asked the registered medical practitioners to enter their details on the portal. The portal was envisioned as a transformative initiative to centralize and streamline the registration of doctors across India.
However, after the commencement of the registration process, doctors started complaining about the problems that they faced while trying to register themselves on this new centralized portal.
Earlier, Dr. Babu had also raised the problems faced by the doctors in registering on NMR. He had previously explained how the doctors had to wait for a long period of time to get the NMR registration despite getting approval from the concerned State Medical Councils.
He had informed that his own NMR registration could not be processed at NMC as it was returned four times with irrelevant queries. These included objections regarding the names of his university and state medical council, as well as discrepancies between the name on his Aadhaar card and his degree certificate.
Raising the problems faced by the doctors to register on NMR, Dr. Babu had written to the NMC Chairperson as well and he had suggested the Commission to automatically enrol the doctors once the registration number and degree certificates were verified by the SMC.
Previous RTI applications filed by the doctor had revealed that till December 2024, the names of only 284 doctors were included in NMR. Later, the Commission informed that till January 14, 2025, only 8598 applications were filed by Registered Medical Practitioners for NMR enrolment. Among these 6.198 applications were not approved.
Also Read: Only 8,598 out of 13 Lakh Doctors Applied to Register in NMR- RTI Reveals Shocking Data
