NMC is rewriting the rules for opening medical colleges

NMC is rewriting the rules for opening medical colleges

What is changing

NMC has issued a draft amendment, the Establishment of New Medical Institutions Assessment and Rating (Amendment) Regulations 2026, reported on 4 August 2026. It removes two long-standing barriers to opening a new medical college in India.

Two requirements have been dropped

The essentiality certificate, a mandatory State government document confirming a new college was needed in that location, has been removed from Clause 9(a) of the 2023 regulations. Clause 9(c), which required proof of a dedicated corpus fund, has also been deleted.

What NMC tightened instead

Applicants must now provide a Consent of Affiliation letter from a recognised university, and must demonstrate complete infrastructure at the time of application. Temporary arrangements are explicitly prohibited. The gate has moved from paperwork to physical readiness.

Why this matters to a student

Fewer barriers to opening a college means more colleges, and more colleges means more seats. India added 9,911 MBBS seats in a single year, reaching 1,36,939 across 823 colleges. Faster expansion changes the odds a student faces at counselling.

The part nobody says out loud

Private seats already outnumber government seats, at 73,643 against 63,296. In 2025-26, private seats grew 6.34% while government seats grew 3.84%. The expansion is real, and most of it is arriving at a price rather than as a government seat.

More seats does not mean cheaper seats

32 deemed university medical colleges already charge more than Rs 1 crore for MBBS, up from 16 in 2022-23. With hostel, mess and university fees the total crosses roughly Rs 1.5 crore. Supply has been growing for years and the top of the market has not softened.

What to ask about any new college

Ask when it was established, whether it has its own attached teaching hospital, how many patients that hospital actually sees, and where its first batch ended up. Complete infrastructure on paper is still no track record, and a medical degree is only as good as the training behind it.

Understand first. Decide later.

Read the full comparison of MBBS in India against MBBS abroad, with the seat data, the fee data and the licensing data in one place.