Pharmacy institutes served stiff deadline for biometrics amid ‘ghost faculty’, fake records
Faced with issues such as fake records and ghost faculty, the Pharmacy Council of India has mandated a 15-day deadline for colleges to implement biometric attendance. Failure to comply may result in withdrawal of approvals.
Published 24 Aug 2025, 03:44 PM IST
Over half of India’s approved pharmacy colleges have not yet adopted the new system, and just 13% faculty members are registered. (Mint)
New Delhi: Confronted with fake records and the spectre of “ghost faculty” in pharmacy colleges, the Pharmacy Council of India, a statutory body under the health and family welfare ministry, has issued a 15-day ultimatum for institutions to adopt the Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance System (AEBAS).
In a strict push to enforce the biometric attendance mandate, the council has warned that any failure to meet the deadline may lead to withdrawal of approvals for the institutions. Such a move could disrupt pharmacy education, as the unapproved institutions would not be able to operate.
Pharmacy colleges have till 5 September to adopt the biometric attendance system, following a notification issued by the Pharmacy Council of India on Thursday.
Statistics from the council reflect an alarming situation. Over half of India’s approved pharmacy colleges have not yet adopted the new system, and just 13% faculty members are registered. The council that regulates India's pharmacy profession, practice and education has also uncovered massive data faking, with 45,355 duplicate or invalid teacher profiles on the government’s DIGI-PHARMed portal, as reported by Mint earlier
According to a communication issued to the pharma schools, and seen by Mint, the council observed that the adoption of the biometric system is way behind expectations. The biometric system, which is designed to prevent manual interference in attendance records, is essential to restore accountability, it said.
The pharmacy council has warned that unless institutions act quickly, weak oversight will continue to undermine teaching standards and erode the credibility of pharmacy degrees and the quality of pharmacists produced in the country.
As of 7 August, only about 2,735 institutions had onboarded to the new system, less than half the approximately 6,000 approved ones. The lag in faculty registration is even more critical. Of the roughly 95,000 teaching faculty approved by the government on the DIGI-PHARMed platform, only about 12,600 have been registered on the AEBAS.
The council has approved around 5,669 institutions for a diploma in pharmacy and 2,958 institutions for a degree.
The biometric attendance system, which was rolled out earlier this year, has been designed to create a more reliable and secure database of pharmacy educators and students by linking unique IDs with Aadhaar numbers.
“The lack of proper faculty attendance tracking threatens the integrity of academic standards and could ultimately devalue the degrees of thousands of pharmacy students across the country,” an official said.
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