MCI to introduce biometric attendance for medical faculty

New Delhi: The Medical Council of India has decided to put in place biometric attendance facility in both government and private medical colleges to track attendance and eliminate “ghost” faculty members.

The move is part of the Digital Mission Mode Project (DMMP) to bring in more transparency in the attendance system in about 439 medical colleges, and will be made mandatory as part of the minimum standards required to open a medical college.

“The move is aimed at exposing ghost faculty that is arranged by some medical colleges during the inspections to seek the medical education regulator’s approval to run their college,” a senior official said.

Every faculty will be also be issued a Radio Frequency Identification-enabled identity card to help the regulator monitor the attendance, salary and work status of the faculty on a real-time basis.

“Some private medical colleges have either ghost medical faculty or the appoint guest lecturers to teach students. This malpractice will end when the Aadhar card details of faculty members are linked to biometric attendance devices,” a senior official said.

MCI, in November last year, had asked all the faculty members of government and private medical colleges to register with their Aadhar Card details so that it could be linked with the biometric attendance system.

The proposal to install biometric attendance system was conceptualised in 2009 and was stuck in red tape before being cleared recently.