Here’s the extracted text from the provided image (a page from The Lancet, Vol 406, July 19, 2025, page 220). The article is titled “Corruption scandal engulfs Indian medical education” by Dinesh C Sharma.

Corruption scandal engulfs Indian medical education

India’s Central Bureau of Investigation alleges widespread bribery and collusion between government officials and private medical colleges, raising urgent concerns about the integrity of medical education and the future quality of health care in the country. Dinesh C Sharma reports.

India’s federal investigation agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), has uncovered a corruption scandal involving several medical colleges. After searching more than 40 locations in five states, the CBI filed a criminal case on June 30, 2025, alleging collusion between government officials and private medical colleges to manipulate the regulatory process.

The First Information Report (FIR) by the CBI names 34 people, including eight officials at the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the Joint Director of the National Health Agency (who was formerly a member of the Medical Assessment and Rating Board), the former Chairman of the University Grants Commission, and doctors deputed by the federal medical regulator the National Medical Commission (NMC) to inspect medical colleges, in addition to officials at seven medical colleges. Three NMC inspectors and three officials at the Shri Rawatpura Sarkar Institute of Medical Sciences and Research in Nava Raipur were arrested while exchanging 5-5 million rupees.

According to the CBI, health ministry officials gained unauthorised access to confidential information on the regulatory status of medical colleges, including inspection schedules and compositions of inspection teams. The information was shared with intermediaries who, in turn, alerted the medical colleges concerned. “Such prior disclosure enabled medical colleges to orchestrate fraudulent arrangements including the bribing of assessors to secure favourable inspection reports, deployment of non-existent or proxy faculty (ghost faculty) and the admission of fictitious patients to artificially project compliance during inspections”, said the FIR.

“These acts committed in exchange for monetary and other illicit considerations undermine the integrity of the regulatory framework and jeopardise the quality of medical education and public health standards in the country”, the CBI said.

The NMC and the Ministry of Health did not respond to queries sent by The Lancet. The NMC, however, released a statement on July 14 saying it viewed the matter “very seriously” and has decided to blacklist the said four assessors, pending investigation and final verdict in the matter. It has been also decided that the renewal of existing number of seats of six medical colleges in undergraduate and postgraduate courses shall not be done for the academic year 2025-26.

The Shri Rawatpura Sarkar Institute, whose Chairman, Director, and four other officials are named in the FIR, said it was “fully cooperating with the concerned authorities” and that the institution “upholds the highest standards of transparency and compliance with all regulatory norms”.

The NMC was constituted in 2020 to replace the Medical Council of India (MCI) after its President Ketan Desai was arrested for bribery. “The NMC emerged as a cataclysmic response to the widespread failures of the MCI, aiming to reform medical education”, said Vikash R Keshri, public health and health policy researcher. “However, structural flaws, weak capacity, and rushed expansion of its mandate have led to concerns that the NMC is simply a rebranded version of its predecessor. It lacks a clear action plan and is hindered by centralised power and bureaucratic inefficiencies.”

Running private medical colleges can be lucrative. For instance, the annual fee to attend the Index Medical College (one of the medical colleges named in the FIR) is 1.6 million rupees, compared with the fee of 100,000 rupees for a government-run college in Madhya Pradesh. The annual intake for the MBBS course is about 118,000 students. With 1.3 million registered practitioners, India has one doctor for every 1263 people (WHO recommends one per 1000). To correct the situation, the Government has launched a drive to increase MBBS places. In March, 2025, the Government announced an addition of 10,000 places and set a target of adding a total of 75,000 seats over the next 5 years.

This drive has led to the hurried opening of new medical colleges and the expansion of existing ones. The NMC has relaxed norms for the appointment of faculty to address shortages and support the expansion of medical training. “Under pressure to rapidly expand undergraduate and postgraduate seats without long-term vision or adequate capacity, the NMC has increasingly mirrored the functioning of the MCI,” said Keshri. “The NMC is supposed to uphold and enforce standards in medical education. If its focus is going to be on quantity alone, then the quality of doctors produced is bound to be compromised, and will impact the quality of health delivery”, said Umesh Kapil, Secretary of the National Academy of Medical Sciences.

Dinesh C Sharma

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Notes on the image/article:

• It matches the real Lancet publication (July 19, 2025 issue).0
• The CBI FIR (RC 218/2025) dated June 30, 2025, is documented in official sources, with arrests at Shri Rawatpura Sarkar Institute and actions by NMC (blacklisting assessors, freezing seat renewals at certain colleges).10

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