How many members does the NMC have and what is its composition?

The NMC consists of 33 members: a Chairperson who must be a medical professional with substantial teaching or research experience, 10 ex-officio members, and 22 part-time members, of whom 19 are nominated by States and Union Territories on a rotational basis. The commonly cited figure of 25 members comes from the original 2019 Bill draft and is not the operative post-enactment structure.

What are the four autonomous boards under the NMC?

The four boards are the Under-Graduate Medical Education Board (UGMEB), the Post-Graduate Medical Education Board (PGMEB), the Medical Assessment and Rating Board (MARB), which can levy monetary penalties on non-compliant institutions, and the Ethics and Medical Registration Board (EMRB), which maintains the National Register of licensed doctors and handles ethics complaints.

Has the National Exit Test (NExT) replaced FMGE?

No. Although Section 15 of the NMC Act introduced NExT as a common final-year MBBS exam meant to eventually replace the licentiate exam, PG entrance criterion, and foreign graduate screening test, the NMC officially deferred its implementation by 3-4 years on 29 October 2025, citing feedback from medical associations like FAIMA. FMGE and the existing licensing exams remain in force in the interim, with NExT rollout now expected around 2028-2029.

What is the difference between the NMC and the Medical Advisory Council (MAC)?

The NMC is the statutory regulator with powers over medical education, assessment, and ethics. The Medical Advisory Council is a separate, purely advisory body representing States and Union Territories, with roughly 60% of its nominated members being medical practitioners; it advises the NMC on maintaining minimum standards but holds no regulatory power of its own.

What is the main governance criticism of the NMC?

Critics argue that NMC governance remains doctor-heavy with limited representation from public health experts, social scientists, or patient and citizen voices, and that the EMRB's ethics adjudication process lacks judicial expertise and fixed timelines. These concerns echo the accountability problems that had earlier discredited the Medical Council of India.

General Studies9 June 2026· 8 min read

National Medical Commission (NMC): Structure and Role

Q: When was the National Medical Commission established and what law did it replace?

The National Medical Commission was established under the National Medical Commission Act, 2019, which received presidential assent in August 2019 and came into force on 25 September 2020. It repealed the Indian Medical Council Act, 1956, and replaced the Medical Council of India as India's medical education and practice regulator.

Roundtable IAS Team

Roundtable IAS

The National Medical Commission is one of the most frequently tested statutory bodies in the governance segment of the UPSC syllabus, and for good reason: it represents a rare case of Parliament dissolving an elected professional regulator and replacing it with a predominantly government-nominated one. The NMC was established under the National Medical Commission Act, 2019, which received presidential assent in August 2019 and came into force on 25 September 2020, repealing the Indian Medical Council Act, 1956 in the process. For aspirants, the NMC is not just a factual "statutory body" question — it is a live case study in regulatory redesign, medical education reform, and the perennial tension between professional autonomy and public accountability. This article builds the structure, functions, and current-affairs dimension you need for both Prelims and Mains.

Why the NMC Was Created: The MCI Backstory

No answer on the NMC is complete without the institutional memory of what it replaced. The Medical Council of India (MCI), constituted under the 1956 Act, was the original regulator of medical education and practice in India. However, it had already lost legitimacy well before its formal abolition:

In 2010, the MCI was superseded by a government-appointed Board of Governors after corruption charges surfaced against its then-president, Ketan Desai.
The episode exposed a structural flaw: a body composed overwhelmingly of elected doctors was regulating the very institutions and colleagues who elected it, creating conflicts of interest in accreditation and licensing decisions.
The MCI was formally dissolved only when the NMC Act took effect in September 2020, meaning India functioned under an ad hoc Board of Governors for roughly a decade before Parliament legislated a permanent replacement.

This history matters for Mains answers on regulatory capture: the NMC was designed precisely to break the self-regulating, election-based model that had allowed vested interests to control medical college recognition, seat allocation, and ethics enforcement.

Composition of the NMC

The operative structure of the NMC, as laid down in the Act, consists of 33 members:

A Chairperson, who must be a medical professional with substantial experience in medical education and research.
10 ex-officio members, drawn from the leadership of key institutions and boards under the NMC framework.
22 part-time members, of whom 19 are nominated by the States and Union Territories on a rotational basis, alongside other nominated experts.

A common examination trap is the "25 members" figure, which comes from the original 2019 Bill text before certain amendments were incorporated during passage. Aspirants should treat the Act's operative provisions — Sections 3 and 4 — as authoritative, and cite 33 as the correct composition figure rather than the earlier draft number. This is precisely the kind of precision UPSC rewards in Prelims and penalizes when answers are vague in Mains.

The Four Autonomous Boards

Unlike the MCI, which concentrated most functions in a single council, the NMC Act created four specialised autonomous boards, each with a defined regulatory mandate:

1Under-Graduate Medical Education Board (UGMEB) — designs standards and curricula for MBBS-level education.
2Post-Graduate Medical Education Board (PGMEB) — performs the same function for postgraduate medical education.
3Medical Assessment and Rating Board (MARB) — assesses and rates medical institutions for permission, recognition, and renewal, and is empowered to levy monetary penalties on institutions that fail to comply with norms.
4Ethics and Medical Registration Board (EMRB) — maintains the National Register of all licensed medical practitioners and adjudicates professional conduct and ethics complaints.

This four-board architecture is a distinguishing feature you should always mention when contrasting the NMC with the MCI, since the MCI had no equivalent functional bifurcation — a fact examiners like to test through "which of the following bodies function under the NMC" style questions.

The Medical Advisory Council: A Separate, Advisory Body

A recurring source of confusion is treating the Medical Advisory Council (MAC) as part of the NMC's own membership structure. It is not. The MAC is a distinct advisory body that:

Represents the States and Union Territories in matters of medical education policy.
Advises the NMC on maintaining minimum standards in medical education, training, and research.
Must have roughly 60% of its nominated members drawn from medical practitioners.

The functional distinction is important for Mains answers on cooperative federalism in health governance: the MAC is the channel through which states retain a voice in a otherwise centrally dominated regulatory architecture, but it is purely consultative — it does not share the NMC's statutory regulatory powers.

NEET, Common Counselling, and the National Exit Test (NExT)

The NMC's regulatory reach extends to entrance and licensing examinations, an area with significant current-affairs movement.

The NMC conducts and oversees NEET-UG and NEET-PG as the uniform, common entrance tests for admission to medical courses across the country.
It is empowered to specify and regulate common counselling for admission to undergraduate, postgraduate, and super-specialty seats in all NMC-governed institutions — a step toward the "one nation, one entrance test" philosophy.
Section 15 of the NMC Act introduced the National Exit Test (NExT), conceived as a single common final-year MBBS examination designed to simultaneously serve three purposes: a licentiate exam for practice eligibility (replacing the older MCI screening test/FMGE), a criterion for PG entrance, and a screening test for foreign medical graduates.

If governance-heavy bodies like the NMC, its functional boards, and reform debates around medical education feel like they need structured, discussion-based clarity rather than rote memorisation, this is exactly the kind of static-cum-current-affairs overlap our GS Foundation (GS-2 Governance) programme is built around — mapping statutory bodies against the reforms and controversies that keep them in the news.

Current Affairs Alert: NExT Deferred (2025-2026)

This is the single most important recent update on the NMC, and one that directly contradicts older textbook claims.

On 29 October 2025, the NMC officially deferred the implementation of NExT by 3-4 years, pushing the likely rollout to around 2028-2029.
The deferral followed feedback from medical associations, including the Federation of All India Medical Association (FAIMA), and concerns over institutional and student readiness.
In the interim, FMGE and the existing licensing examination framework continue to operate — NExT has not replaced FMGE as of now.

Many aspirants still write answers assuming NExT is already operational simply because it was introduced by statute in 2019. This is a factual error: statutory introduction and actual implementation are two different things, and the gap between them is itself a good example of implementation lag in Indian regulatory reform — a theme worth flagging in Mains answers on policy design versus policy execution.

Recent Regulatory Actions and the Accountability Debate

The NMC continues to fine-tune its regulatory framework through periodic notifications, which are useful as illustrative current-affairs pegs:

A gazette notification dated 17 February 2026 amended the "Establishment of New Medical Institutions... Assessment & Rating Regulations, 2023," revising Clause 31(h) to introduce a zero-tolerance policy — any attempt by a medical institution to pressurise MARB or the NMC, whether directly or through intermediaries, will trigger immediate halting or rejection of that institution's application.
Amendments to the Undergraduate Medical Studies and Research (UGMSR) 2023 Guidelines were also issued on 2 July 2025 and 23 April 2026, reflecting the NMC's ongoing recalibration of the UG curriculum framework.

Despite this activism, a recurring critique — useful for GS2 and Ethics answers — is that NMC governance remains doctor-heavy, with limited representation of public health experts, social scientists, or patient and citizen voices. The EMRB's ethics and misconduct adjudication process is also criticised for lacking judicial expertise and fixed timelines, raising accountability concerns that echo the very problems that discredited the MCI. This is precisely the kind of tension — reform intended to fix regulatory capture, yet still vulnerable to similar critiques — that makes for a strong analytical Mains answer rather than a descriptive one.

Roundtable Method: Turning Statutory Facts into Analytical Answers

Getting the NMC's numbers right — 2019 Act, 25 September 2020 commencement, 33 members, four boards — is only half the exam. The other half is being able to argue, in a Mains answer, whether replacing an elected professional body with a government-nominated one actually solved the accountability problem it was meant to fix, or simply relocated it. That kind of argument is exactly what the Roundtable Method is designed to build: structured, discussion-driven sessions under Rohan Dange Sir where static facts are stress-tested through debate rather than memorised in isolation. If governance bodies like the NMC are a weak spot, our GS Foundation (GS-2 Governance) programme is where you build both the factual precision and the analytical edge the answer demands.