PG Resident Stipend in India: What States Actually Pay

There is no national PG resident stipend in India. The regulation requires only that your stipend matches what state government institutions in your own state pay. That is why NMC's own compiled list records figures from Rs. 40,000 to Rs. 1,03,543 a month for the same qualification.

PG resident stipend at a glance

What does the regulation actually say?

One sentence, and it is worth reading closely because everything else follows from it. Clause 5.4 of the Postgraduate Medical Education Regulations, 2023 reads:

"The post-graduate students undergoing post-graduate Degree/Diploma/Super-speciality courses in all the institutions shall be paid a stipend at par with the stipend being paid to the post-graduate students of State Government medical institutions/Central Government medical institutions, in the State/Union Territory where the institution is located."

Three things follow from that wording, and each one explains something students find confusing.

• The benchmark is your state, not the country. A resident in Chandigarh and a resident in Himachal Pradesh are both being paid correctly under the same rule, at very different figures, because they are measured against different state governments.

• The regulation names no amount. There is no national minimum stipend, no floor and no indexation anywhere in the text. The only number that binds your college is the one your state pays its own residents.

• It covers every institution. The words are "in all the institutions". There is no carve-out for private, deemed or self-financed colleges. A private college in Maharashtra owes what Maharashtra's government colleges pay.

How much is a PG resident stipend by state?

NMC publishes a compiled list of what colleges have reported, college by college, with a column for the state government figure. It is the only official source that covers the whole country in one document. The NMC compiled stipend details list is where the range in this piece comes from.

Read it with three things in mind. It does not say which year of PG each figure applies to. Most entries were reported in 2024, some later. And colleges report in different ways, so some rows are a basic figure and others a basic plus dearness allowance.

The gap between the top and the bottom of that table is Rs. 63,543 a month, for the same degree, in the same country, under the same regulation.

First-year figures that colleges publish themselves

Since July 2025, colleges have had to publish their own stipend figures, which gives cleaner numbers for a specific year of study. Three examples, each from the college's own disclosure.

Each of those colleges publishes the figure on its own site, in the format NMC prescribed: the GIMS Greater Noida stipend letter of 16 February 2026, the Grant Government Medical College resident stipend details for 2025, and the Madurai Medical College stipend details page.

All three rise year on year within the course. At Grant Medical College the second year is Rs. 93,303 and the third Rs. 94,135. At Madurai the steps are Rs. 53,544 and Rs. 54,636. At Greater Noida all three years are the same figure.

Why you cannot simply stack these numbers side by side

This is the part most comparisons get wrong, and it is worth a paragraph of its own.

Grant Medical College labels its Rs. 92,470 "salary gross", so allowances are already inside it. Madurai's Rs. 52,451 sits in a column headed state government stipend. Jhalawar in Rajasthan reports Rs. 55,200 plus dearness allowance, so the real figure is higher than printed. Banda in Uttar Pradesh reports Rs. 56,100 plus non-practising allowance plus dearness allowance.

So a table that puts Rs. 92,470 next to Rs. 55,200 is comparing a gross figure with a basic one. Before comparing two states, check whether each figure is basic pay, basic plus allowances, or gross.

One figure is fixed and useful as an anchor. A Junior Resident at AIIMS is on Pay Level 10 of the 7th Central Pay Commission matrix, with entry pay of Rs. 56,100 a month plus the usual allowances, as the AIIMS Junior Resident advertisement states. Several state figures are built on that same Level 10 base.

What happens in private medical colleges?

The rule is the same. What NMC found when it checked was not.

NMC's Postgraduate Medical Education Board ran a survey and published the results in an advisory dated 24 August 2023. It received 10,178 responses from PG students, of which 7,901 came from private medical colleges across 213 colleges in 19 states and two union territories. Those 7,901 responses are the denominator for everything below.

NMC's own wording on the third row is worth quoting, because it describes a practice families rarely hear about before they sign: "1228 students who are getting stipend informed that stipend given by colleges/institutes is taken back by management."

The advisory then directed all self-financed and private medical colleges to implement the stipend regulation, and warned that NMC "will take strict action for non-compliance of the provisions of the Regulations". The full NMC advisory on payment of stipends to PG medical students, 24 August 2023 carries the survey and the direction.

More than half of the private college residents who answered said they were paid below their own state's government rate. That is the single most useful number on this page for a family choosing between a government seat and a private one. Our web story on colleges not paying residents covers the same ground visually.

What NMC has done about it

Three documents, in order, and the direction of travel is clear.

1. April 2024, disclosure directed. NMC told every medical college to submit details of stipends paid to interns, PG residents and senior residents, and to publish them monthly. The notice records why: "Hon'ble Supreme Court of India in the WP(C) No.730/2022 & other cases, vide their orders dt. 16-09-2023 and 01-04-2024, has directed NMC to submit the details of stipends paid to the Medical Interns and residents." Read the NMC public notice on submitting stipend details, 30 April 2024.

2. November 2024, show cause. Colleges that had not submitted were asked "to show cause as to why penal action should not be taken against them for their failure to submit the information". The NMC show cause notice of 28 November 2024 carries the list.

3. July 2025, publication made mandatory with penalties. Every college must publish its course-wise fee structure and the stipend paid to interns, junior residents and senior residents on its own website. The listed consequences are a show cause notice, financial penalties, withdrawal of course recognition and suspension of admissions. The NMC public notice on mandatory disclosure of fees and stipend, 11 July 2025 sets them out.

That July 2025 notice is why you can now look up a college's stipend yourself before you accept a seat. Most government college websites carry a stipend details page in the NMC format. Check it for the college you are considering, not for the state in general.

When does a PG stipend go up?

Not on an annual national cycle, because no such cycle exists in the regulation. A PG stipend changes when your state changes what it pays its own residents.

In practice there are two triggers. The first is dearness allowance. West Bengal's health department memorandum of 21 March 2025 puts it plainly: "Such Stipend will be enhanced as and when any installment of D.A. is declared by the Government." The second is a one-off state order. The same memorandum raised stipends by a flat Rs. 10,000 a month with effect from 1 April 2025, over a base that had stood since 2020.

So if your state has not revised in a few years, your stipend has probably been moving only with dearness allowance instalments.

What to do if your college is not paying you properly

1. Find your state's government college figure. That is your benchmark, not the national average. Look up a government medical college in your own state on its stipend details page.

2. Check your college's own published figure. Since July 2025 it must be on the college website. A college with no stipend page is already out of compliance with the disclosure rule.

3. Put the gap in writing to the college. Address it to the Dean or Principal, quote clause 5.4 of the Postgraduate Medical Education Regulations, 2023, and ask for the figure to be brought to parity.

4. Keep the dated trail. Email rather than a conversation, and keep copies of your own payslips alongside the college's published figure.

5. Escalate to your state Directorate of Medical Education, which is the authority that supervises colleges in your state, with a copy of your correspondence.

What you are owed during the District Residency Programme is the same figure. Your parent college keeps paying your full stipend for those three months, as our guide to the District Residency Programme sets out.

How this compares with intern and senior resident pay

A PG stipend sits between the two. Interns are paid considerably less, and the figure varies by state in the same way, which we have mapped in our guide to the MBBS internship stipend by state. At Grant Medical College an intern is on Rs. 18,000 against a first-year resident's Rs. 92,470.

Senior residency pays more again. West Bengal's March 2025 order fixes senior resident remuneration at Rs. 80,000 a month with a PG diploma, Rs. 85,000 with a PG degree, and Rs. 1,00,000 with a post-doctoral degree. For what the whole ladder looks like, see our guides to PG resident entitlements under PGMER 2023 and to choosing a course after MBBS. The PG resident stipend web story is the short version of this page.

Sources

• NMC, Postgraduate Medical Education Regulations, 2023, clause 5.4

• NMC, compiled stipend details list for medical colleges

• NMC, Advisory on payment of stipends to PG medical students, 24 August 2023

• NMC, Directions for submitting stipend details, 30 April 2024

• NMC, Mandatory disclosure of fee structures and payment of stipend, 11 July 2025

• AIIMS, Junior Resident advertisement with Pay Level 10 entry pay