NMC retains draft regulations on stipend for medical interns

‘Vague provision would give room for managements to deny stipend to medicos’

The National Medical Commission (NMC) seems to have rejected the stand of the erstwhile Medical Council of India (MCI) on stipend for medical interns as the draft regulations on their compulsory rotating internship have been gazetted without any changes.

The Draft Regulations issued on April 21, 2021, had said that all interns shall be paid stipend “as fixed by the appropriate fee fixation authority as applicable to the institution/ University/State”. They were gazetted on November 18.

The erstwhile MCI, however, had come up with a public notice on January 25, 2019, on Graduate Medical Education Regulations, 1997. The Board of Governors that superseded the MCI was considering to include a provision that said “all the candidates pursuing compulsory rotating internship at the institution from which MBBS course was completed, shall be paid stipend on par with the stipend being paid to the interns of the State Govt. Medical Institution/Central Government Medical Institution in the State/ Union Territory where the institution is located.” However, it was not gazetted until the Board was dissolved.