Medical colleges that have not yet entered the registration numbers of their doctors on the National Medical Commission's biometric attendance portal have three more weeks to do it. After that, the commission says, the system will start blocking and rejecting the daily attendance of faculty whose details are missing or wrong.
The extension is in an NMC office memorandum dated 5 October 2026, signed by NMC Secretary Dr Raghav Langer and addressed to the deans, principals and directors of all medical colleges and institutions under the commission.
The memo deals with the National Medical Register (NMR) or State Medical Register (SMR) number of each medical teacher and resident. These numbers have to be entered in the profile of every faculty member on the Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance System, better known as AEBAS, which NMC uses to track whether doctors are actually present in the colleges where they are counted.
What the September order said
The first instruction went out on 3 September 2026. In that memo, NMC said it had found that nodal officers at many colleges had left the NMR or SMR field blank for faculty when they first registered them on AEBAS.
It directed all colleges to update the numbers for all medical faculty, junior residents, senior residents, tutors and demonstrators within one month. Leaving the field blank was described as strictly prohibited.
The September memo also covered teachers who are not doctors. For faculty, tutors and demonstrators who hold M.Sc. and Ph.D. qualifications, nodal officers were told to enter "NA" in the registration number field instead of leaving it empty.
NMC linked the order to its UG and PG Minimum Standard Requirements and the regulations of its Medical Assessment and Rating Board, which call for periodic, transparent and digitally verified assessment of teaching staff. The September memo warned that non-compliance could hurt a college's compliance status during NMC assessments and inspections.
Why the deadline was extended
The one-month window ended in early October. In its 5 October memo, NMC says the update is still pending at some colleges and that some nodal officers have entered erroneous NMR or SMR details.
To give colleges another chance, the commission has granted an additional three weeks. Counted from the date of the memo, that runs to around 26 October 2026. The memo puts the responsibility on the head of each institution, directing deans, principals and directors to ensure the numbers are updated in time.
The warning has been made sharper. Non-updation or incorrect entry of NMR or SMR numbers will result in the automated blocking and rejection of daily attendance by the system, the memo says.
What it means for doctors and students
For a faculty member, a blocked attendance record is not a small matter. Biometric attendance data feeds into how NMC counts the faculty a college has, and faculty strength is tied to the seats a college is allowed to run. A teacher who punches in every day but whose profile carries a wrong number could still show up as absent.
Faculty should therefore check their AEBAS profile with the college nodal officer rather than assume it is correct. The SMR number must match the state council where the doctor is registered, and doctors who already hold a National Medical Register number should confirm which of the two has been entered.
The issue also matters to students and parents, even if indirectly. Seat approvals depend on colleges meeting faculty norms during assessment, and NMC has been publishing its seat figures for the year, including the postgraduate seat matrix for 2026-27 dated 29 September. The commission also ran a separate online window this month for Eligibility Certificate applications from 1 to 7 October.
Where colleges can get help
The memo has been copied to medical education departments and directorates in all states and Union Territories, to the registrars of state medical councils, to the presidents of NMC's four autonomous boards and to the AEBAS team at the National Informatics Centre.
For technical problems, nodal officers can write to the NMC helpdesk at support.aebas@nmc.org.in. Colleges that wait until the last few days of October may find the helpdesk busy, so the safer course is to clear the list now and recheck any entries the portal rejects.
