All med colleges to launch face-based mobile Aadhaar authentication for teachers’ attendance
The Statesman | 4 October 2025The NMC, in order to leverage latest technology and make the attendance process user-friendly and methodical, has issued the directives to all teaching hospitals and research institutes through a public notice served seven days ago.
“… all faculties are required to install the FACE-based mobile Aadhaar Authentication App on their mobile phones, as per the User manual…,” the notice stated. “In this direction, it is conveyed that facial QR code-based wall-mounted attendance devices will be discontinued and will no longer be in use, from 1 October,” it added.
The existing system required faculties of all medical colleges and institutions in the country to mark attendance through the Aadhaar-enabled biometric attendance system (AEBAS). Earlier, in a public notice issued by the NMC secretary, Dr Raghav Langer, it was stated: “The face-based Aadhaar authentication with UIDAI RD (registered device) service is currently in use in various government offices through the NIC (National Informatics Centre).”
Dr Langer directed the medical colleges and institutions to share the GPS location of different points in the college with NMC so that attendance can be marked within a 100-metre radius of a given GPS location in the college.
“A college will have to share GPS locations of points where it wants the convenience of attendance marking via a mobile App,” as per the notice marked to all the state and UT health departments. The NMC had last year introduced the AEBAS portal to enhance transparency and reduce manual interference. The idea was to eliminate the need for physical inspections and instead rely on data accuracy and surprise inspections.
All faculty members have to instal the face-based Aadhaar authentication app (mobile phone-based) in their mobile phones. The commission further said that the dean/principals of all medical colleges/institutions should take necessary action for the installation of the application on the mobile phones of all their faculty members.
The app is available on Android Play Store and Apple App Store. The user manual for the installation of the app was also attached to the notice.
An administrative officer at Calcutta Medical College & Hospital (MCH) said that with launching of the face-based mobile Aadhaar authentication system, the attendance system of medical teachers of all teaching hospitals would be thoroughly scanned by the authorities of respective colleges.
Dr Indrajit Saha, director of medical education (DME), who looks after teaching hospitals in West Bengal, didn’t offer a comment when The Statesman contacted him for his reactions on the change.
