Private medical colleges are saving crores of rupees by either not paying stipends to MBBS interns and resident doctors or paying them a fraction of what government medical colleges pay. According to the National Medical Commission (NMC), the data on stipend payment submitted by colleges showed that 60 (33 govt colleges and 27 private ones) were not paying MBBS interns any stipend.
Most private colleges have not even submitted the information on how much stipend is being paid. After initially threatening to take action, in the face of colleges not even submitting data sought from them, the apex regulator, the NMC, has passed the buck to state authorities.
Thousands of MBBS students doing clinical duties during the final year internship are being paid less than the national floor minimum wage of Rs 5,300 per month according to the data submitted to Supreme Court by NMC. Data from 20 private colleges shows that they pay Rs 5,000 or less. Many colleges have admitted that they do not pay any stipend. Though this information was available to NMC in July last year, no action has been taken against any college.
The NMC’s PG Medical Education Regulation 2023 stipulate that private colleges have to pay a stipend equivalent to what government colleges of the state pay resident doctors. However, the NMC (Compulsory Rotating Medical Internship) Regulations, 2021 are vague about how much MBBS interns should be paid. They state that “all interns shall be paid stipend as fixed by the appropriate authority applicable to the institution/University or State”. Taking advantage of this, many private colleges pay MBBS interns a pittance.
“I had alerted the health ministry to the vague wording in the clause regarding stipend for MBBS interns in 2022, when the draft was put up for comments from the public, and later raised objections when the suggestion was not incorporated. I had requested them to amend the clause to make it mandatory for all colleges to pay stipend at par with government medical colleges of the particular state. Neither the health ministry nor the NMC has done anything about it,” said Dr KV Babu, an RTI activist who has been pursuing the issue over five years.
The stipend paid by some private colleges is as low as Rs 2,000 per month though they take several lakhs as fees per year. For instance, in Andhra Pradesh, government colleges pay MBBS interns Rs 22,500 per month. However, many private colleges are paying just Rs 2,000-5,000 as stipend per month. The tuition fee alone for the MBBS course in these private colleges is Rs 65 lakh for management quota students and over Rs 1.2 crore for NRI quota students. Most of these colleges with about 150 seats each would have had to spend roughly Rs 4 crore per year if they paid stipend equal to what government colleges are paying. By paying the interns a pittance, a college could save over Rs 2 crore or more each year, even as they collect around Rs 50 crore just from tuition fees.
Similarly, in Karnataka, MBBS interns in state government colleges are paid a stipend of Rs 30,000 per month. But many private colleges are paying just Rs 10,000-12,000, while their annual tuition fees for management and NRI seats could be as much as Rs 25 lakh to Rs 45 lakh per year. In Pondicherry, while government colleges pay Rs 20,000 as stipend, a deemed university medical college with 250 seats, where annual tuition fees are Rs 25 lakh, pays just Rs 5,000. The college earns over 1.2 crore from each MBBS student, but spends less than one lakh rupees on stipend for each student.
There is wide variation even in the stipend paid in government colleges from about Rs 35,000 in Assam to just Rs 12,000 in Uttar Pradesh. This is despite a long-standing demand of MBBS students for the amount to be centrally fixed and made mandatory for all colleges whether government or private. NMC was not even acting on the issue of non-payment of stipend till the Supreme Court categorically stated that paying stipend was mandatory. The case drags on as NMC claims to be struggling to get data from medical colleges. Instead of asking colleges, which are under its direct control, the NMC has been writing innumerable letters to the directorate of medical education of various states asking them to submit the data from all colleges on payment of stipend.
| Stipend paid to MBBS interns (in Rs) | ||
| State | Govt | Pvt |
| Assam | 35,000 | NA |
| West Bengal | 29,700-32,000 | 12,500-28,000 |
| Karnataka | 30,000 | 10,000-25,000 |
| Odisha | 28,000 | 15,000 |
| Tamil Nadu | 25,000-27,300 | 2,750-13,500 |
| Delhi | 26,300 | no info |
| Meghalaya | 26,300 | NA |
| Kerala | 26,000 | 10,000-16,000 |
| Telangana | 25,900 | 2,000-10,000 |
| Arunachal | 25,000 | NA |
| Andhra Pradesh | 22,500 | 2,000-10,000 |
| Tripura | 20,500 | no info |
| Bihar | 20,000 | 10,000 |
| Goa | 20,000 | NA |
| Himachal Pradesh | 20,000 | no info |
| Pondicherry | 20,000 | 2,500-5,000 |
| Gujarat | 18,200 | 12,000 |
| Maharashtra | 18,000 | 4,000-12,000 |
| Uttarakhand | 17,000 | 5,000 |
| Punjab | 15,000 | 15,000 |
| J&K | 12,300 | no info |
| Haryana* | 12,000 | no info |
| Mizoram | 12,000 | NA |
| Uttar Pradesh | 12,000 | 4,000-7,500 |
| Sikkim | NA | 14,500 |
NA- not applicable since the state may not have a private college, or a govt college in the case of Sikkim
No info- the information has not been submitted by the state/college
*only one college has given data and the amount is wrong since Haryana revised the stipend to Rs 17,000 in 2018 and last year it was revised again to Rs 24,310.
States which had not submitted any information included Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Manipur, Nagaland, and the union territories of Chandigarh and Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The stipend in govt colleges in Rajasthan is Rs 14,000, in Jharkhand it is Rs 17,000, Rs 15,900 in Chhattisgarh and almost Rs 14,000 in Madhya Pradesh.
Source: Affidavit filed by the NMC in court in July 2024
