CIC directs NMC to make medical college assessments public

The chief information commission has directed the National Medical Commission to regularly upload on its website the assessment reports of all the medical colleges after taking into consideration the exemptions given to personal information under the Right to Information Act. The commission directed the NMC to comply within 30 days from the date of receipt of the order.

The commission was hearing the appeal filed by Dr Mohammed Khader Meeran, a doctor from Trichy and RTI activist, who had sought attested copies of the infrastructure assessment reports of all medical colleges. The NMC has been resisting making any of the reports public claiming that it was exempted from doing so as assessment reports include declarations made by faculty and staff of colleges which contain personal information.

In July 2023, following the earlier advisory from the CIC to make the assessment reports public, the NMC had responded to Dr Meeran stating that according to the Establishment of Medical Institutions, Assessment and Rating Regulations, 2023 framed by the NMC, “the Medical Assessment and Rating Board shall make available on its website or otherwise in public domain the annual assessment results and ratings of medical colleges or medical institutions” and that thus the March 2023 order of the CIC had been complied with. However, it did not make the necessary documents public.

Instead, the NMC in its meeting held on May 1 2024 decided that self-assessment forms (SAF) of medical colleges “need not be in public domain”. But the CIC has ruled that this was not a decision that NMC could take since proactive disclosure was mandatory under the RTI Act.

“The Commission hereby reiterates its earlier advisory issued to the NMC to ensure that information about the assessment reports of all the medical colleges should be regularly uploaded on their website after taking into consideration the exemptions under section 8(1) and section 9 of the RTI Act, in compliance with the provisions of the Section 4 of the RTI Act to boost transparency and in the larger public interest concerning the quality of medical education in the country,” stated the Commission’s order of July 15, 2024.

“Commission notes that the importance of medical colleges assessment report lies on the fact that these reports reveal the date of inspection, details of infrastructure of the concerned medical college/institution, including number of beds in each department and bed occupancy rate, number of in-patient, outpatient and also department-wise total number of faculty in the concerned teaching hospital and the college,” stated the CIC order. The commission observed that disclosing these assessment reports was essential for aspiring medical students seeking admission into medical courses as it allowed them to make informed decisions while choosing the college for admission during the counselling process.

Not only did the NMC stop uploading college assessment reports, as soon as it took over from the erstwhile Medical Council of India, it also took down all the assessment reports that MCI had already uploaded pertaining to 550 medical colleges approved till 2021.

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