NCAHP Draft 2026: Bridge Courses and Provisional Registration

The National Commission for Allied and Healthcare Professions (NCAHP) has published the draft Provisional Registration of Allied and Healthcare Professionals Regulations, 2026, for public consultation. The proposal is relevant to working allied and healthcare professionals whose qualifications may not meet the commission’s newer standards, as well as students, institutes and others wishing to comment on the draft.

This is a proposed regulatory framework, not a recruitment notice or an open registration application. NCAHP has invited suggestions and objections until 4 December 2026 by email; the draft proposes provisional registration followed by a profession-specific bridge course and qualifying examination for eligible professionals.

Important Dates

The notice is numbered AHS/60/2026-NCAHP and was issued by Umesh Balonda, Secretary, NCAHP, under the National Commission for Allied and Healthcare Professions Act, 2021. The draft is open for public feedback; NCAHP has not announced a date for issuing final regulations.

Vacancy Details

This is not a job notification and does not advertise vacancies or appointments. The draft concerns professional registration across 10 broad allied and healthcare categories. Professions identified in the notification include physiotherapy, optometry, medical laboratory technology (MLT), psychology, dietetics and nutrition, community care and behavioural health sciences, along with other fields covered by the categories. NCAHP has also worked on registration rules for professionals across 57 allied fields.

Eligibility Criteria

Educational Qualification

The proposal is aimed at working professionals whose current qualifications do not meet NCAHP’s recognition and education requirements. A qualification’s level alone may not be enough for direct registration: the course must also satisfy the commission’s applicable recognition standards. Professionals whose qualifications already meet those standards would not need a bridge course under this proposed arrangement and could apply for regular registration.

For eligible professionals who need to align older qualifications with the newer standards, the draft proposes bridge courses lasting six months or one year, depending on the profession and the person’s existing qualification. Supervised clinical training may be included where required. The proposed courses would be run by existing recognised allied and healthcare education institutes. Institutes could offer bridge-course seats equal to their regular-course intake and could seek approval for additional seats. Proposed admissions would be on a first-come, first-served basis, subject to eligibility.

For physiotherapy, the draft describes one-year bridge courses for eligible holders of two- or three-year diplomas and for holders of a Bachelor of Vocation (BVoc) degree. Diploma qualifications would need recognition from the relevant state government, and the applicable admission batches would have to fall between 1994 and 2021. BVoc courses would need to comply with University Grants Commission (UGC) regulations, with 2021 identified as the proposed cut-off year.

The draft’s newer physiotherapy standard identifies the Bachelor of Physiotherapy (BPT) as the recognised qualification. The revised BPT programme is proposed to take five years, including six months of compulsory internship, compared with the earlier four-and-a-half-year duration. The commission also plans to make the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) compulsory for BPT admission.

Dieticians and medical social workers may also need a bridge course if their existing diploma or degree does not meet NCAHP’s standards; holding a postgraduate qualification would not by itself guarantee direct registration. For some professionals in community care, behavioural health sciences and other allied fields, the draft specifies experience requirements that may range from one to five years. The precise requirement would depend on the specialisation and educational qualification.

The proposals have raised questions among some BVoc and MVoc students, including students at Maulana Azad National Urdu University (MANUU), a central university in Hyderabad. The source account reports that around 600 students in Medical Imaging Technology (MIT) and MLT were protesting over recognition of their courses. Fourth-year BVoc MIT student Md Minhaj questioned the need for provisional registration for students who had completed regular classroom courses and suggested that a BVoc course name could be changed to BSc if the qualification title were the issue. He also raised concern that the reported provisions referred to three-year BVoc qualifications but did not clearly address four-year BVoc or MVoc degrees. NCAHP chairperson Yagna Shukla did not comment while the draft was under public consultation. These matters remain subject to the final regulations.

Age Limit

The draft notification does not specify an age limit or age-related relaxation for provisional registration. Eligibility is described in terms of professional category, educational qualification and, for some fields, work experience.

Application Fee

No provisional-registration application fee is specified in the draft public notice, and the notice does not announce that registration applications are open. For bridge-course tuition, the proposal says the fee would be approximately proportional to the fee charged by the relevant institute for its regular courses. It does not set one fixed amount, so the actual course fee may vary by institute. The proposal does not provide a separate fee table or a fixed amount for public feedback submissions.

How to Apply

At this stage, there is no open provisional-registration application process or registration portal announced. Interested people can submit comments on the proposed regulations by the consultation deadline. The proposed registration steps, if adopted in the final rules, are described separately below.

1. Read the draft regulations and related documents on the official NCAHP draft regulations page.
2. Identify the relevant rule or section and explain the change, suggestion or objection you want the commission to consider.
3. Email your submission to ncahp.regulations@ncahp.mohfw.gov.in by 4 December 2026.
4. For future registration, wait for NCAHP to issue final regulations and official instructions. Under the proposal, eligible professionals would apply to their State Allied and Healthcare Council (SAHC), or directly to NCAHP if their state has no functioning council.
5. If a state council rejects a provisional-registration application under the proposed system, the applicant could appeal to NCAHP. After provisional registration, the professional would need to complete the required bridge course and pass the qualifying examination to obtain full registration.

The proposed provisional certificate would be valid for three years, with a possible one-year extension. That would allow up to four years, subject to approval and the final rules, to complete the course and examination. The draft states that a professional would not be allowed to continue practising after the provisional certificate expires.

Salary & Pay Scale

There is no salary or pay scale because this is a proposed professional-registration framework, not an employment opportunity. The draft discusses bridge-course fees but does not set a single amount; the proposed fee would be linked approximately to the regular-course fees charged by the institute.

Selection Process

No recruitment selection process applies. Under the proposed registration route, the relevant council or NCAHP would check the applicant’s qualifications and other eligibility conditions before issuing provisional registration. The professional would then complete the applicable bridge course and generally pass a qualifying examination to obtain full registration. In some cases, the examination held by the institute providing the bridge course could count as the qualifying examination, so a separate test might not be needed. The exact assessment arrangements depend on the final regulations.

The consultation process is separate from professional registration: NCAHP will receive comments and objections, review them and may revise the draft before issuing final regulations. No date for the final rules has been announced. The draft sits within the commission’s broader effort under the NCAHP Act, 2021, to harmonise education, training and professional standards, including for people trained before the commission was established in 2021.

Eligible professionals and other interested readers should review the official draft and send any relevant feedback by 4 December 2026. Professionals considering registration or further training should treat these provisions as proposals and wait for NCAHP’s final rules and instructions before making decisions.