India 2026 Medical Licence Draft: a UID, and Still No CPD

India's medical regulator published a draft amendment to its registration and licensing regulations on 11 August 2026. It adds a national register, a unique identifier for every doctor, and portability of registration across state lines. It does not add a continuing professional development requirement — which, after three years of drafts, is itself the finding.

What the draft does

The instrument is the Registration of Medical Practitioners and Licence to Practice Medicine (Amendment) Regulations 2026, notification number R. 11061/05/2026-EMRB-Reg, dated New Delhi, 11 August 2026 and published on the National Medical Commission's own feed. It is available as a download from the NMC.

Three substantive changes:

• A national register. The draft provides that the "National Medical Register (NMR) shall be a National Register of medical practitioners maintained by EMRB" — the Ethics and Medical Registration Board.
• A unique identifier. It provides for "a Unique Identification (UID) Number assigned to every medical practitioner".
• Portability. Registration with one state council becomes valid for practice across India.

That third point is the one with real operational consequence. Under the current arrangement a doctor's registration is a state matter, which is also why continuing education obligations in India are set state by state rather than nationally.

It also withdraws the previous draft

Worth knowing if you tracked the earlier version: this notification withdraws a draft published on 7 April 2026. So the April text is dead and should not be cited.

On process, comments are considered "on or after the expiry of a period of thirty (30) days from the date on which the copies of the Gazette of India containing these draft Regulation (amendment) are made available to public", submitted by email to an address given in the notification. Note the clock runs from gazette availability rather than from the notification date, which is a distinction that matters if you are counting days.

What it does not do, and why that is the story

The draft retains the existing licence term verbatim: "The licence to practice medicine issued to a registered medical practitioner shall be valid for a period of Five years".

It contains no CPD, CME or credit-hour requirement. Renewal remains conditioned on application to the state medical council and nothing else.

Put that in sequence. The Registered Medical Practitioner (Professional Conduct) Regulations 2023 were gazetted and then held in abeyance in August 2023, which removed the only national CPD mandate India has ever had on the books. An April 2026 draft came and was withdrawn. This August 2026 draft rewrites the registration regime fairly substantially — national register, unique ID, portability — and still declines to impose continuing education.

Three opportunities in three years to add a national CPD condition, and three decisions not to. Anyone writing that Indian doctors face a national CPD requirement, or that one is imminent, is not reading the drafts.

The renewal obligation that does exist

None of this means Indian doctors have nothing to do. The five-year licence is a real deadline with a real consequence, and it is widely under-appreciated because it gets confused with CPD.

The governing regulations are the 2023 Registration of Medical Practitioners and Licence to Practice Medicine Regulations, gazetted 10 May 2023 and published as an NMC gazette notification. Clause 8 sets out the mechanics:

• The licence is valid five years, "after which the medical practitioner shall have to renew the licencing."
• The application "may be made before three month of expiration of the validity of licence."
• If no application is received in that window, the State Register entry goes inactive and "the person shall not be entitled to practice medicine."

So the thing that can actually stop an Indian doctor practising is a missed form, not a missed course. That is the opposite of the position in most comparable jurisdictions, and it is worth saying plainly to anyone planning their compliance year.

Where the real obligations sit

Two layers below the national one, both verifiable.

State medical councils do impose CME in some states — Uttar Pradesh ties 30 hours over five years to renewal, and West Bengal is phasing the same figure to January 2030 — which we set out in Indian CME is set by your state council.

And Indian nurses, unlike doctors, sit under a national instrument with a mandatory renewal link. The comparison is in our guide to CPD and CNE requirements for Indian nurses and doctors.

A note for anyone assuming another Indian regulator fills the gap: the National Financial Reporting Authority is frequently credited with CPD powers it does not have, and we set out what it actually does in what NFRA actually regulates. The pattern in India is consistent — the obligations are narrower and more local than secondary coverage suggests.

This article describes a draft amendment, not law. Drafts are withdrawn and replaced, as this one demonstrates; verify the current position with the NMC before relying on any of it.