NEW DELHI: In a startling revelation that raises serious questions about data integrity in India’s healthcare system, more than 40,000 doctors appear to have vanished from official records in Delhi between 2020 and 2024. The discrepancy came to light through a Right to Information (RTI) response obtained by the United Doctors’ Front (UDF), exposing a sharp mismatch between figures maintained by the Delhi Medical Council (DMC) and those presented by the Union Health Ministry in Parliament.
According to the RTI reply, the DMC had recorded 72,636 registered doctors in Delhi as of 2020. However, four years later, the number presented before Parliament dropped drastically to just 31,479. The figure was shared on August 2, 2024, in a written reply to an unstarred question No. 2067 in the Lok Sabha by the Union Health Ministry, listing state-wise counts of registered allopathic doctors across India.
The sharp fall has left health experts and medical associations puzzled. “Either the Ministry placed false data before Parliament, or the records were never verified with the Delhi Medical Council, the primary statutory authority. In both cases, the system stands guilty of negligence or deception,” said Dr Arun Kumar, National General Secretary of the UDF.
“When 40,000 doctors vanish on paper, it’s not just a statistical error, it’s a policy disaster in motion. Every missing doctor represents thousands of unaccounted patients. Public health projections, budgets, and recruitment drives have all been calculated on fabricated figures,” he added.
The RTI documents also reveal that the number of registered doctors in Delhi was 57,749 a decade ago, in 2014. Given that over a thousand new registrations are processed by the DMC every year, officials find it implausible that the total count could have dropped by over 40,000 in just four years.
Since the DMC’s executive body was dissolved earlier this year, no official clarification could be obtained from the council. The Delhi government’s Directorate General of Health Services is currently overseeing the DMC’s functions. No official response was received from there as well.
However, former officiating DMC president Dr Naresh Chawla dismissed the RTI figure as incorrect. “I have no idea how these wrong numbers were tabled in Parliament. Before the dissolution, the number of registered doctors with the DMC had already crossed one lakh. Every month we used to register over 2,000 doctors, including foreign medical graduates and those transferring from other states. The numbers should be going up, not down," he said.
