National Medical Register sign-up voluntary for doctors: Health Minister explains in Parliament
National Medical Register
New Delhi: Explaining the low rate of doctors registering on the National Medical Register (NMR), the Union Minister of State for Health, Dr. Anupriya Patel, recently informed the Lok Sabha that the application for issuance of NMR identification (ID) is voluntary.
She also explained how the doctor applies through the NMR portal, and the application first gets screened by the State Medical Council, which sends it to NMC after the verification.
The Minister informed that the National Medical Commission (NMC) has written to all the State Medical Councils to put in extra efforts to complete the NMR registration.
These statements came from the Union MoS Health in response to the queries raised by Lok Sabha member Shri Aditya Yadav who sought to know from the Minister whether the Government has taken cognizance of the fact that as of 1st May, 2025, less than 1 per cent of doctors have registered with the National Medical Register eight months after its launch in the country. He also sought to know the reasons for such low rate of doctors' applications and asked for the details of the initiatives taken/proposed to be taken by the Government to ensure that the NMR creates a comprehensive registry of all allopathic doctors in the country.
Responding to these queries, the Minister informed, "National Medical Commission (NMC) has informed that the application for issuance of National Medical Register (NMR) Identification (ID) is voluntary."
"As per the Standing Operating Procedure (SOP), the applicant applies through NMR portal. The application first goes to concerned State Medical Council (SMC) where he/she was registered initially and after verification of his/her credentials, the SMC sends the application to NMC through the same portal. The application so received is checked and after verification, the same is approved and NMR ID is generated. Further, NMC has written to all SMCS to put in extra efforts to complete the NMR registration," she added.
NMR is a dynamic database and will be a central repository of all registered doctors, in which their authenticity is verified by Aadhaar IDs. All the MBBS doctors who are registered on Indian Medical Register (IMR) have to register again on the NMR, the NMC said in a public notice recently, and added that all medical colleges/institutions, state medical councils (SMCs) are inter-linked on the portal.
Launching the NMR portal on 23.08.2024, the Apex Medical Commission asked the registered medical practitioners to enter their details on the portal. The portal was envisioned as a transformative initiative to centralize and streamline the registration of doctors across India.
However, after the commencement of the registration process, doctors started complaining about the problems that they faced while trying to register themselves on this new centralized portal.
Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that the Right to Information (RTI) applications revealed that even after eight months of NMR being launched, NMC received only 10,411 applications for doctors' registration on NMR.
Further, the RTI response had revealed that among these 10,411, till May 2025, 10,237 applications did not get approval and these also include 139 applications, where a query was raised. NMC had also informed that altogether 2 applications had been rejected.
As per the data shared by the Union MoS Health earlier this year, India has altogether 13,86,150 registered allopathic doctors. Therefore, less than 1% of the registered doctors have so far applied for their registration on NMR. On the other hand, 10237 out of 10411 applications- meaning 98.32% of applications for NMR registration have not been approved yet.
Also Read: Doctors Say 'No' to NMR? RTI Exposes abysmal state of National Medical Register
