NMC has asked disabled students to declare ‘what they cannot do'. This is illegal — and cruel

Indian Express

3 days ago

It was a typical exhausting Friday at my medical college. I returned home, drained from the day, expecting nothing more than dinner and rest. Instead, what awaited me was an email from the Supreme Court of India. I was being directed — on short notice — to assess a NEET-UG aspirant with a disability the very next morning and submit my report in a sealed envelope by Monday. The court had rejected two previous assessments by AIIMS Nagpur and AIIMS Delhi. Why? Because both had done what most institutions do best — calculate percentages of disability instead of assessing a student's ability to pursue medicine.
The student was Om Rathod — 88 per cent disabled due to muscular dystrophy — and yet, burning with determination to become a doctor. What the court wanted was not a number, but an answer: Can he, with the right support, study medicine? That assessment led to a landmark Supreme Court judgment — a rare beacon of inclusive justice — directing the National Medical Commission (NMC) to revise its outdated and discriminatory guidelines for MBBS admissions. But what came next — just last week — is a betrayal not just of that spirit, but of the law.
The NMC's 'interim guidelines' came two days before the counselling deadline. Buried within them was a new clause: A self-declaration affidavit. It asks candidates with disabilities to legally affirm — on stamp paper — what they cannot do. Can they stand on one leg? Can they climb stairs unaided? The real question is: Why isn't the NMC reading the Constitution? I asked Om, the same young man whose courage moved the apex court to act, whether he could truthfully answer those questions. 'No,' he said. And he shouldn't have to. These questions are humiliating, ableist, and illegal. They punish you for not performing like a non-disabled body — even though the very idea of 'reasonable accommodation' is to remove barriers so people can perform.
I assessed Om's functional competency. He uses a mobility scooter. I use callipers and crutches myself. Neither of us can bear weight on our affected limbs. Neither of us can climb stairs without help. But both of us made it through medicine. So what, exactly, is NMC trying to assess? The committee behind these guidelines clearly has no understanding of functional ability or of what the Supreme Court ordered. In its first meeting in February — on record in the Anmol v UOI case — the NMC agreed it was time to rename 'Disability Assessment Boards' to 'Ability Assessment Boards,' and to define what reasonable accommodations actually mean. None of that made it into the final document.
Instead, the NMC waited till the Court went on summer recess and dropped this vague, ableist document without public consultation — just days before the counselling deadline. This delay has created chaos once again. A family from Odisha has been stuck in Delhi for over a week waiting for their son's assessment. In the South, students from Telangana and Andhra are being forced to travel across states to Kerala or Tamil Nadu. The Court had explicitly ordered one assessment centre per state. Clearly, the NMC wasn't listening.
It also wasn't listening when the court mandated that these assessment boards must include doctors with disabilities, to train them and guard against ableist bias. That, too, never happened. So what we get are absurd rejections like the one from Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital in Tamil Nadu: 'Since the patient is wheelchair-bound, she cannot do coordinated activities of the lower limb. Not eligible.'
Wheelchair-bound? Patient? This is not only inaccurate, it's insulting. The same state has a gastro-surgeon with polio performing liver transplants and a urologist doing surgeries using a standing wheelchair. The organisation Doctors with Disabilities: Agents of Change has multiple wheelchair-user (not patients) doctors thriving and flourishing. Perhaps the doctors rejecting these students should consult their own colleagues before making such statements — or, at the very least, read the Omkar Gond v UOI (2024) judgment. What makes this even more damning is that there's still no appellate body in place, even though the Court mandated one. That means these students — already exhausted, humiliated, and denied — have no path to appeal unless they somehow make it to the high court or the Supreme Court again. But how many can afford that? How many have the strength?
It's clear now that neither the NMC nor DGHS has learned anything from the multiple rap-on-the-knuckle SC orders. They continue to deny disabled aspirants, recycling the same experts who wrote the guidelines the Court already struck down.
The result? A process that is not just broken — it is cruel.
This isn't just a policy failure. It is a systemic refusal to listen, to learn, to evolve. The experts with lived experience are the ones who navigate this reality every day. Until our institutions learn to value lived experience over outdated assumptions, the cycle of discrimination will continue — wrapped neatly in a sealed envelope, marked urgent, and delivered into the void where justice should have been.
The writer is a medical doctor at University College of Medical sciences, Delhi, and SC SC-appointed expert in Om Rathod v DGHS and Anmol v UOI SC judgements. Views are personal