Flooded with complaints in connection with non-transfer of Aadhaar enabled biometric attendance system (AEBAS) the National Medical Commission (NMC), highest body monitoring medical education in the country, has pulled up medical colleges across states and union territories (UT).

In a circular issued on 6 March, the NMC has also threatened to take strong action against the medical teaching institutes to withhold or derecognize licenses and threatened not to increase post-graduate seats if they fail to transfer AEBAS IDs in a timely manner.

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Owing to non-implementation of transferring AEBAS IDs of those teaching doctors transferred or appointed to a new medical college they face problems in marking their attendance.

“The National Medical Commission has been receiving several complaints regarding non-transfer of AEBAS IDs in cases of transfer/ appointment of employees from one medical college/ institute to another, which leads to difficulty in marking attendance and subsequent issues for such persons,” the circular stated.

Earlier in end-January the IT wing of the NMC had issued the warning to all medical colleges to comply with the directives immediately to ‘prevent adverse actions against them (colleges).

Taking up the matter seriously the commission had stated that despite various reminders and requests many medical colleges are yet to implement the AEBAS, health management information system (HMIS) and CCTV connections.

The commission was prompted to take such drastic initiatives to keep strong vigilance on attendance records of medical teachers in teaching hospitals.

“Implementation of biometric attendance system can be used as an effective and convenient digital solution to recording the attendance of faculties, senior residents and tutors of medical colleges. Therefore, NMC intends to implement the Aadhaar enabled biometric attendance system,” the commission had stated.

The Union health ministry has already made it mandatory asking medical colleges to implement the AEBAS and HMIS.

“Earlier we had a biometric attendance system but that is not working owing to non-maintenance of devices during Covid pandemic. Now the NMC has directed to implement modern hi-tech AEBAS, HMIS and CCTVs installation in colleges. We have requested Swasthya Bhaban to provide funds to implement the systems,” said a principal of a government medical college in the city.