Ten universities, Section 25 of the PM&DC Act 2022 and degrees that will not be registered: Pakistan's March 2026 order against unrecognised postgraduate medical programmes

Pakistan's medical regulator is the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council, which works under the PM&DC Act 2022. Doctors must be on its register to practise, and the same logic reaches into specialist training: a university may award a postgraduate medical or dental degree or diploma only if the council has recognised that programme under Section 25 of the Act. For a young doctor, that recognition is the difference between a qualification that counts towards a career and a certificate no hospital or licensing body will accept.

On 25 March 2026 the council announced that this rule had been ignored on a wide scale. According to Dental News Pakistan, the PMDC had identified ten universities offering postgraduate medical and dental programmes without the recognition required under Section 25: TIMES University Multan, NUR International University Lahore, Gomal University in Dera Ismail Khan, Sohail University Karachi, Shah Abdul Latif University Khairpur, Khwaja Fareed University of Engineering and Information Technology in Rahim Yar Khan, the University of Faisalabad, the University of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Hazara University Mansehra and Kohat University of Science and Technology. The Daily Times reported that the notification came from the PMDC registrar and that the universities had been awarding postgraduate degrees and diplomas to MBBS and BDS doctors without recognition. The Express Tribune reported the same notification and list.

According to Dental News Pakistan, the council ordered the universities to stop the unrecognised programmes, barred any institution from advertising, launching or conducting such a programme without prior PMDC recognition, and barred universities from granting affiliations to unrecognised programmes, citing Section 34 of the Act. The Daily Times added that any institution wishing to offer such a qualification must first apply under Section 25. Both outlets reported that qualifications from these programmes will not be registered and that doctors currently enrolled will not be considered recognised trainees. Neither gave a count of the doctors affected.

The gap this case exposes is the one between a university's general right to award degrees and a regulator's approval of a specific programme. A doctor who sees a familiar university name, a prospectus and a fee schedule naturally assumes the qualification at the end is recognised. The check that failed was not whether the university existed, but whether the council had recognised that particular degree. Nothing in the coverage alleges anything further against the universities, and the order is directed at the programmes rather than at their undergraduate work.

For a doctor or family weighing a postgraduate place in Pakistan, or anywhere else, the lesson is to verify the programme, not the institution. Ask the regulator, here the PMDC, whether the exact degree or diploma is recognised, and ask the university in writing for its recognition letter before paying any fee. Treat advertising as a claim to be checked, keep every receipt, and remember that a regulator can refuse to register a qualification years after the money was paid. Other Pakistan cases elsewhere on this site, from the PMDC fee cap to foreign-quota seats sold in the regulator's name, make the same point: the only approval that matters is the one the regulator can confirm itself.