NMC Implements Aadhaar-Enabled Biometric Attendance System For Medical College Assessments

To ensure transparency and reduce manual interference in the assessment of medical colleges, data from Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance System (AEBAS) portal will be used by the National Medical Commission, thus doing away with physical inspections.

However, some surprise inspections by the commission will continue to verify the data which is being uploaded on the portal as well as to check the physical infrastructure, Dr B Srinivas, Secretary, NMC, said on Thursday.

To address the problem of ghost faculty in medical colleges and to also ensure attendance of medical students and faculty, the NMC is already basing its assessment based on AEBES portal which is already operational for the last one year.

According to Dr Srinivas, “Using data from Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance System dashboard will bring in more transparency. Seventy-five per cent attendance of the working days of two months on an average will be taken into consideration to reach a decision on whether a college is fulfilling the norms or not as far as attendance is concerned.”

Earlier inspections used to be done even for a single day attendance, he said, adding that all the data will be available at any given time. Further, the NMC will also launch a portal where medical colleges can appeal online for any redressal of their compliance related to assessments.

Dr Srinivas said, “This new portal will be soon operational once the security clearance is taken from the concerned agencies to avoid hacking. Once it’s opened, every college will submit its data right from the beginning of the inception of the college.”