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 The Pharmacy Council of India (PCI) has directed the pharmacy institutions to strictly comply with its mandate to fully implement Aadhar Enabled Biometric Attendance System (AEBAS) on or before March 1, 2026.
According to a notification by the ministry of health and family welfare on March 21, 2025, the system should be implemented across all PCI-approved pharmacy institutions, and the Council has also in the past repeatedly directed the institutions that all approved institutions are mandatorily required to complete the AEBAS registration and onboarding process as prescribed under the centralized attendance monitoring portal of PCI.
However, the Council has now said that it is observed that many of the institutions have not yet implemented or registered on the AEBAS portal.
"It is important to note that any institution that does not fully complete the AEBAS registration and onboarding process, including acquiring devices, registering them, onboarding faculty, and regular marking of the attendance in AEBAS, institutions will be placed under category not to make admin for the academic session 2026-27," said the Council in a circular recently.
"Incomplete registration, malfunctioning devices, or failure to onboard faculty on the AEBAS portal will be regarded as non-compliant," added the Council, which averred that all institutions are directed to strictly follow the above instructions and finalize the process well ahead of the specified deadline.
In order to comply with the system, the institutions should acquire and install approved AEBAS biometric devices in alignment with the specifications outlined in the previous circulars for the device procurement, and all institutions must update the record on the DIGI-PHARMed Portal in the AEBAS section.
All PCI-approved institutions must register their institution and complete onboarding of all their faculty on the Central AEBAS Portal of PCI. They should also register and configure the devices through the nodal login, following the detailed instructions outlined in the Nodal Officer Manual available in the portal.
All faculty members need to be verified and activated through the nodal admin dashboard, followed by synchronization of devices for real-time attendance tracking. All authorized teaching faculty are required to regularly record attendance using the registered biometric devices, it added.
The Council has instructed all organizations to refer to the comprehensive AEBAS Implementation FAQs and User Manuals found on the PCI website for assistance with onboarding, device registration, and user management. Any technical assistance or grievance related to AEBAS registration, institutions may log a request through the PCI Grievance Portal, it added.
The ministry of health and family welfare, in November, 2023, issued a notification allowing PCI to perform Aadhaar authentication on a voluntary basis for authenticating officials, faculty and students on the portal and for capturing attendance of the faculty through biometrics using yes or no or e-KYC authentication facility.
Following this, the Council said that the AEBAS will be implemented in a phased manner, with the PCI focusing on monitoring of attendance for all faculty and non-faculty staff of all the pharmacy institutions in the first phase.
The ministry of health, in a notification on March 21, 2025, amended the notification November, 2023, authorising the PCI to access the attendance data of officials, faculty and students of the PCI-approved pharmacy colleges online from the centralised AEBAS and that they, "shall adhere to the provisions of the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, rules, regulations, or guidelines made thereunder and directions issued with respect to the use of Aadhaar authentication as laid down by the Unique Identification Authority of India or Central government from time to time".
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