India’s medical regulator has fined seven medical colleges for failing to disclose stipend data, but thousands of interns and resident doctors still receive little or no pay, four years after the issue reached the Supreme Court.
The National Medical Commission has sent notices to three private and four government colleges but a doctor campaigning for better stipends and a lawyer who petitioned the Supreme Court say the move creates the appearance of action without addressing the low stipends.
Each year, graduates from about 123,000 MBBS seats across India enter a mandatory year-long internship during which they are eligible for stipends.
A March 12 notice from the NMC imposed a penalty of ₹1 crore on each defaulting college for not providing details of the stipends they pay, despite repeated reminders since July 2025.
“This is tantamount to an eyewash — we have seen no action yet on nonpayment of stipends,” said K.V. Babu, an ophthalmologist in Kannur, Kerala. Babu had complained about disparities in stipends to the Union health ministry in 2022.
The NMC did not respond to a query sent by this newspaper on Sunday seeking its comment on the allegation of an eyewash. However, the NMC had said in a notice last year that it had taken steps to address complaints about unpaid stipends, citing regulations that require such payments.
“The real issue is the absence of nationwide regulations from the NMC to eliminate disparities and the whims of colleges or states,” Babu said.
Against the backdrop of the NMC’s inaction, Babu and others say, thousands of final-year MBBS interns and postgraduate residents, including graduates from foreign medical colleges, in many private and government colleges do not receive stipends set by some state authorities.
“In some instances, foreign medical graduates are offered internships only after they sign a declaration that they will not demand stipends,” said Tanvi Dubey, a lawyer who has filed petitions in the Supreme Court on behalf of domestic and foreign medical graduates.
The Supreme Court, in response to a petition filed by Dubey in 2022, had noted in October 2023 that the non-payment of stipends to interns could be likened to “bonded labour” and had asked what the NMC was doing as a regulator.
“The March 12 NMC notice to the seven colleges appears intended to signal to the court that the NMC is doing something,” said Rajesh Aravind, secretary-general of a network of parents and medical students. “But what about action against the colleges that are not paying adequate stipends?”
In Kerala alone, the network estimates, nearly 2,000 interns across 21 private medical colleges receive stipends ranging from ₹8,000 to ₹17,000, instead of ₹27,300 per month as stipulated by state regulators. Interns in the state’s 11 government colleges, however, receive the full amount.
“Interns in private medical colleges work long hours, sometimes up to 48 hours continuously, doing exactly the same kind of work as their counterparts in government colleges,” Aravind said. “The NMC should be held accountable for inaction all these years. Its inaction helps colleges save money.”
The NMC fined four government colleges in Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Jharkhand and Rajasthan and three private colleges in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.
Critics say the problem is particularly severe for Indians who have graduated from foreign medical colleges.
An association of Indian parents of medical graduates from Belarus has estimated that more than 1,500 foreign medical graduates spread out in dozens of medical colleges in Gujarat alone receive no stipend.
“In response to a Right to Information Act query, we were bluntly told that a high-level committee has decided foreign medical graduates would not receive stipends and the state does not have funds to pay the stipends,” Rajesh Khetani, former secretary of the parents’ association, said.
