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The National Medical Commission (NMC) has introduced significant changes to the existing rules governing undergraduate medical education in India. The amendments, published in the Extraordinary Gazette of India on April 27, 2026, modify key regulations that affect how medical colleges are set up and expanded across the country.
As of now, medical colleges are not allowed to increase more than 150 MBBS seats per year. The NMC has now removed this restriction. Medical colleges will no longer be bound to this upper limit when they plan to expand their student enrolment capacity.
The NMC has also done away with a rule that tied the number of MBBS seats to the population of a state or union territory. Earlier, colleges had to maintain a ratio of 100 MBBS seats for every 10 lakh people in a given region. This is expected to particularly benefit states like Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, which can now increase seats without having to worry about the cap.
The notification brings changes to infrastructure norms as well. Previously, a medical college and its associated hospital had to be within 30 minutes of travel time from each other. This time-based rule has now been replaced with a distance-based standard.
Under the updated guidelines, the college and hospital must be located within 10 km of each other. For institutions situated in the North East and the Himalayan states, this limit has been extended to 15 km, taking into account the geographical challenges of these regions.
The amendments modify two key regulatory documents — the Guidelines under Regulation 10 of the Establishment of New Medical Institutions (UG-MSR 2023) and the Graduate Medical Education Regulations 2023.
This article was written by a student interning with TNM