India’s apex medical regulatory authority has refused to disclose the outcomes of a show-cause notice it had issued to 115 government and 83 private medical colleges for not submitting details of stipends they paid to undergraduate interns and postgraduate residents.

The National Medical Commission (NMC), responding to an RTI query filed by a Kerala doctor, has declined to disclose stipend details, if any, received from colleges or actions taken against those colleges issued show-cause notices.

“The matter has been taken to the legal section UGMEB (Undergraduate Medical Education Board), NMC and as per available information the matter is subjudice,” the NMC said in its response on January 13 to the RTI query from ophthalmologist K.V. Babu.

The NMC had on November 28 last year issued a show-cause notice with a three-day deadline to 115 government and 83 private medical colleges that had failed to submit details of the stipends paid to their interns and residents as directed by the NMC in April 2024.

The NMC’s April directive asking colleges to upload details of stipends had followed complaints by sections of interns and residents that some medical colleges were denying or paying paltry stipends. The November show-cause notice had asked defaulting medical colleges to furnish data on stipends paid during 2023-24 within three days and explain why penal action should not be taken against them for their failure to submit the information.

“It is inexplicable why the NMC does not want to disclose the stipends paid by colleges — especially when colleges are bound to adhere to regulations governing stipends,” said Babu who has since 2019 been campaigning to ensure that private colleges pay stipends on a par with government colleges.

Maulana Azad Medical College and Atal Bihari Vajpayee Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi and the Government Medical College, Calcutta, and Government Medical College, Barasat, are among those that have received the
show-cause notices.

Babu said it is possible that some government medical colleges that pay appropriate stipends may simply have not bothered to respond to the NMC’s directive, thus attracting the notice.

The NMC, under direction from the National Human Rights Commission, had conducted a nationwide survey in 2023 seeking information about stipends from colleges. The NHRC had earlier received complaints from medical students about
inadequate stipends.

Postgraduate students and residents in some government medical colleges may receive between ₹50,000 and ₹1,00,000 as stipends while those in some private colleges get much less or nothing at all.