# Can Medical College Faculty Do Private Practice? NMC's Full-Time Rule Explained Author: Dr.Pushpinder Kaur Author URL: https://doctorfaculty.com/blog/author/dr-pushpinder-kaur Published: 2026-08-01 Category: NMC Category URL: https://doctorfaculty.com/blog/category/nmc Meta Title: Can Medical College Faculty Do Private Practice? NMC's Rule Explained Meta Description: NMC's PGMSR-2023 amendment bars faculty from private practice during college working hours and breaks, with mandatory 75% annual attendance. Tags: Doctor Faculty Jobs, NMC Tag URLs: Doctor Faculty Jobs (https://doctorfaculty.com/blog/tag/doctor-faculty-jobs), NMC (https://doctorfaculty.com/blog/tag/nmc) URL: https://doctorfaculty.com/blog/medical-faculty-private-practice-rule-nmc If you're weighing a move into academic medicine and wondering how it affects your ability to see private patients, NMC's latest PGMSR-2023 amendment spells this out clearly — and it's worth understanding before you sign on anywhere. ## The rule itself ### Understanding the full-time requirement Faculty must be full-time and shall not engage in private practice during [college](https://doctorfaculty.com/blog/faculty-requirements-200-seat-medical-college-ugmsr) working hours, including lunch break or any other breaks. There's one carve-out: in states where government rules specifically permit it, private practice is allowed outside college working hours. In effect, this isn't a new philosophy so much as a tightened, explicitly worded version of a standard that's existed in various forms for years — but this amendment leaves much less room for ambiguity than earlier phrasing did. ## The attendance requirement attached to it It's mandatory to maintain at least 75% attendance in a calendar year, calculated against a 300-day working year. If a faculty member leaves midway through the year and a new appointment is made, the college is expected to consider cumulative attendance of 75% across both — meaning gaps don't just reset the clock without consequence for the department's compliance record. ![Doctors and administrators reviewing attendance and compliance records](https://prod.superblogcdn.com/site_cuid_cmr8wix7i000001xg58xczaok/images/02b8932f-doctorfacultyblogimage033-1785574286820-compressed.png) ## Why this matters for your decision A few practical implications worth thinking through: ![Medical college leadership discussing faculty governance and institutional rules](https://prod.superblogcdn.com/site_cuid_cmr8wix7i000001xg58xczaok/images/exec-5d98868b-e968-4ac9-b48e-01c4b62bf2a6-1785576411281-compressed.png) - **If your income currently depends heavily on private practice**, the "outside working hours" carve-out is worth confirming for your specific state before assuming your current arrangement will simply continue. - **Attendance is now tracked precisely** via AEBAS (Aadhaar-based biometric attendance), and courts have already upheld this system as legal — so treating attendance as a soft, loosely-monitored requirement isn't a safe assumption anymore. - **This applies across PG-training institutions**, government and private alike, so it's not a rule you can sidestep by choosing a particular type of college. ## How this plays out with AEBAS attendance tracking Because attendance is now tracked precisely through Aadhaar-based biometric systems (AEBAS) — a system the Patna High Court has separately upheld as legal — the "full-time, no private practice during working hours" rule isn't just a paper policy anymore. A faculty member's actual presence on campus during declared working hours is verifiable in a way it wasn't when attendance relied on manual registers, which is part of why NMC has been able to tighten enforcement of the 75% attendance threshold alongside this rule. ### How this rule is actually enforced day to day In practice, enforcement runs through two separate but connected mechanisms: the AEBAS attendance record, which shows whether a faculty member was physically present during declared working hours, and periodic MARB inspections, which can cross-check attendance data against declared full-time status during a college's assessment or renewal cycle. A faculty member with a pattern of irregular attendance — even if never formally accused of private practice — is more likely to draw scrutiny during an inspection than one with a clean, consistent record. ### What "working hours" actually covers The rule doesn't define a single fixed clock-in and clock-out time nationally — working hours are set at the institutional or state level, and can vary somewhat between government and private colleges. What's consistent is the principle: whatever hours a college declares as working hours for its faculty, private practice is barred during that window, including breaks. Confirming your specific institution's declared working hours — rather than assuming a generic 9-to-5 — is worth doing directly with HR before making any private practice arrangement. ## Frequently asked questions ### Does "no private practice during working hours" include weekends and holidays? The rule specifically restricts private practice during college working hours, including lunch and other scheduled breaks — it doesn't extend to time outside the institution's declared working schedule, such as weekends or days the college is officially closed, unless a specific state or institutional rule says otherwise. ### What counts toward the 75% attendance requirement — only teaching time, or clinical duties too? The 75% threshold is calculated against the full 300-day working year, which for most faculty includes both teaching and clinical responsibilities, since the great majority of faculty positions in India remain clinically active roles rather than purely academic ones. It isn't a teaching-hours-only calculation. ### Can a state government's private practice exemption override NMC's rule entirely? No — the exemption is narrower than that. It permits private practice outside college working hours specifically where state government rules allow it; it doesn't create a general exception to the "full-time" requirement or to the ban on private practice during working hours and breaks. The exemption is about when private practice can happen, not whether the full-time requirement applies at all. ## The bigger picture Regulators have been fairly consistent about linking full-time faculty presence to teaching quality — the reasoning shows up across multiple NMC circulars, including a recent court judgment that specifically discussed how overburdened, thinly-spread faculty struggle to be present and available. Understanding this rule clearly before you commit to a role saves you from an unwelcome surprise a few months into the job. --- This blog is powered by Superblog. Visit https://superblog.ai to know more. ---