IIT Kharagpur Plans Six NMC-Accredited MD Programmes With 12 Seats in 2026–27

The news

Seventy-five years after its foundation in 1951, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur is set to become the country’s first IIT to introduce postgraduate medical degree programmes accredited by the National Medical Commission (NMC). Beginning with the academic year 2026–27, the institute will admit its inaugural cohort of postgraduate medical students to six Doctor of Medicine (MD) programmes at its integrated medical school and research hub, the Dr B C Roy Multi-Speciality Medical Research Centre, formally renamed the Dr Shyama Prasad Mookerjee Super Speciality Hospital in 2021.

The institute will offer an intake of 12 seats across six specialisations, with two seats allotted each to General Medicine, Radiology, Physiology, Pathology, Community Medicine, and Biochemistry. Admissions will be conducted through the NEET-PG 2026 online counselling process, where eligible candidates will need to apply in Round 2 under the listing for ‘Dr B C Roy Multi-Speciality Medical Research Centre, Kharagpur, under the aegis of IIT Kharagpur’. IIT Kharagpur director Prof Suman Chakraborty said that the vision is to create an ecosystem where clinical excellence meets engineering ingenuity, artificial intelligence and translational research, and that the future of medicine will belong to those who can connect deep clinical understanding with scientific discovery and technological innovation.

What is the National Medical Commission and when was it formed?

The National Medical Commission (NMC) is India's apex regulatory body for medical education and practice, established by the National Medical Commission Act, 2019, which came into force on 25 September 2020. It replaced the Medical Council of India (MCI), which had been constituted under the Indian Medical Council Act, 1956, and was dissolved after the NMC Act received presidential assent on 8 August 2019. The NMC consists of four autonomous boards: the Under-Graduate Medical Education Board, the Post-Graduate Medical Education Board, the Medical Assessment and Rating Board, and the Ethics and Medical Registration Board. The transition from the MCI to the NMC was recommended by the NITI Aayog in 2016 and shaped by a parliamentary standing committee report, aiming to bring transparency and quality reforms to medical education.

How will the programmes integrate medicine and engineering?

The initiative aims to treat medicine, engineering, AI, biomedical sciences, and translational research as an integrated discipline. According to the institute, students will have opportunities to engage in research areas such as AI-assisted clinical decision-making, medical imaging, computational pathology, biomedical devices, molecular diagnostics and precision medicine. The model is designed to develop physician-scientists as well as medical specialists, with added stress on research-driven learning and international academic exposure.

What is the broader objective?

Aligned with the objectives of Viksit Bharat 2047, the programme aims to deliver affordable, accessible, technology-enabled, high-quality healthcare, IIT Kharagpur said in a statement. The immediate milestone is admission of the inaugural cohort through Round 2 of NEET-PG 2026 online counselling. The institute described the 12 seats as 12 opportunities to become founding members of a new academic tradition within India’s premier technological education system.