The Maharashtra University of Health Sciences, Nashik, publishes its dissertation rules as numbered circulars from the Controller of Examinations, each citing a Board of Examinations resolution. For MD and MS students under the Faculty of Medicine the governing document is Circular No. 25/2025, Guidelines for Submission of Dissertation for Postgraduate Courses students admitted in 2024-2025 and onwards, issued on the authority of Board of Examination Resolution No. 14/2025. This guide states what that circular requires, what the university's earlier circulars say about the online route, and what MUHS has not published, so that you know which questions still go to your college.
One note on provenance. The circular reached us as a scanned copy republished by an affiliated government medical college rather than from muhs.ac.in, and we read it page by page. Every rule below is in that document. Ask your college office for its own copy, and for the number of any later circular that amends it.
Who the circular covers
The circular is addressed to the Dean or Principal of every affiliated medical college offering postgraduate courses, and applies to MD and MS students admitted in the academic year 2024-25 and onward. Students admitted earlier are not covered by it and should ask their college which circular governs their batch. MUHS keeps its MDS, Ayurved, Unani, Homoeopathy and nursing dissertations under separate circulars, and the PhD thesis under Annexure XI to Direction No. 04/2015, none of which applies to an MD or MS dissertation. Our format register entry at /formats/muhs records what we had and had not established about MUHS at the time it was written; this guide supersedes it on the MD and MS format.
The calendar: topic, synopsis, submission
The circular itself sets no dates. It requires every postgraduate student to submit the dissertation online on or before the last date decided by the university, and that date is published per examination session. The university's subject syllabi carry the working calendar: the MD General Medicine syllabus on muhs.ac.in requires the topic to be assigned by the end of the sixth month of enrolment, communicated to MUHS through the head of department and head of institution by the seventh month, the study to run up to seventeen months, and the completed dissertation to reach MUHS six months before the degree examination begins. Confirm the equivalent clause in your own subject's syllabus, since the syllabi were written at different times.
The earlier online-submission circulars, Nos. 50/2021 and 48/2022, state three conditions on which a dissertation is accepted at all: the title and synopsis have been approved by MUHS, the university has granted the candidate eligibility, and any change of guide has the university's approval. Both circulars publish a schedule with a normal fee and escalating late-fee slabs, allow late submission only in exceptional cases with the Dean's comments, and state that under no circumstances is a dissertation accepted after the last date. The fee and the slabs are set per session, so take them from the current session's circular rather than from here.
The front matter
The first page is the title page, carrying the full title in Times New Roman at size 20, centred. The second page carries the name of the course, the name of the subject, the admission year and the title. The third page is the index, listing the headings and their page numbers.
The chapters, in the order the circular lists them
- Introduction: the relevant concepts, the gaps in existing knowledge, and the rationale for selecting the topic
- Aim and objectives: SMART, which the circular spells out as specific, measurable, achievable with available resources, relevant and time-bound, divided into primary and secondary objectives
- Review of literature: precise, and preferably limited to the most relevant and recent literature
- Material and methods: twelve elements, listed below
- Observations and results: relevant to the title, aims, objectives and methodology; covering every aim and objective; in appropriate tables and graphs without repeating the same data in both; self-explaining tables and charts, with only the relevant major points explained in the text
- Discussion: relevant to the title, aims, objectives and results; compared with the findings of other studies, with the possible causes of agreement and disagreement described; with the possible impacts, the need for further studies and the limitations of the present study
- Summary and conclusion: a brief summary of the findings, and conclusions and recommendations based on the results of the present study; the circular allows these to be combined or written separately
- References: Vancouver style[4]
- Annexures: at minimum the master chart, the case record form, questionnaire or other tool used, and the informed consent form in English and in every other local language used
The twelve elements of material and methods are the part of the circular most worth pinning above your desk, because they are also the elements an examiner reads for. They are: the type of study design and study setting; the sample size with details of how it was estimated, and the sampling technique; inclusion and exclusion criteria; operational definitions; the instruments used, with their specifications and calibration methods where applicable; the research question in PICO, PEO, PIRD or another format appropriate to the design; the research hypothesis and alternate hypothesis where applicable; randomisation and allocation concealment where applicable; the basis for selecting the case group and comparison group where applicable; matching criteria where applicable; other details specific to the design; and the data extraction sheet, the methods of analysis and the software used. Write each as its own labelled paragraph so that the examiner, and the plagiarism reviewer, can find it.
Font, spacing, pages and pictures
The body is Times New Roman for English, size 12, in black, with line spacing of 1.15. Coloured charts and graphs are allowed. There is no limit on the number of pages or words; the circular says instead that the dissertation should cover all the aims and objectives without an irrelevant review of literature, which is a limit of a different kind. Clinical photographs, if included, must conceal the identity of the subject, and patients' names must not appear in the master chart.
Note what is not required. Unlike the PhD annexure, the MD and MS circular does not require the names of the college, the guide or the institution to be withheld from the dissertation; on the contrary, the second page and the certificate file carry them. Do not apply the PhD anonymity rule to an MD dissertation, and do not apply an NBEMS[2] page limit either: the two formats differ, and /formats/nbems sets out the other one.
The certificate file and the Excel master chart
Two uploads travel with the dissertation. The master chart is uploaded as an Excel sheet on the tab the portal provides for it, separately from the PDF; this is the one MUHS rule that most often surprises a student who has pasted the chart into the document as an image. The second is a separate file whose first page is the dissertation completion certificate signed by the postgraduate guide and the Dean, and whose second page carries the name of the candidate, the college, the guide, the course and the subject, the admission year, the eligibility certificate reference number and the title. Behind those two pages go the title and synopsis approval letter, the Institutional Ethics Committee[5] approval, and, for a hospital-based study, a certificate from the hospital superintendent on the authenticity of the inclusion of the study subjects.
The circular annexes the certificate template. It is issued on the institute's name, states the university, faculty, college, course, subject, candidate, guide, admission year, submission year and date of submission, gives the title in capitals, and has the signatory certify that they have checked the data and observations from time to time and recommend the dissertation to the adjudicators through proper channel. Versions for the Dean or Principal, the head of department and the guide appear in the annexure.
The online route runs through the college
Circulars 50/2021 and 48/2022 describe the mechanism, which the 2025 circular assumes rather than restates. The college first completes each candidate's profile on the MUHS online system and assigns the eligible guide; once assigned, the entry cannot be edited, and a guide whose name does not appear must first be registered in the university's recognised-teacher database. The candidate then uploads two PDFs, one with the certificates and one with the dissertation, pays the fee through the gateway, and the college verifies the credentials and the copy before forwarding every eligible candidate's dissertation to the university by the schedule. Your upload is therefore not your submission; the college's forwarding is, and the college's internal date comes first.
What MUHS has not published
Three things a student usually asks about are not in any MUHS document we have read. The circular sets no similarity percentage and names no checking tool, and the online-submission circulars require no similarity report at upload. Ask your college what it runs and what figure it treats as acceptable. The circular says nothing about binding or hard copies, consistent with a wholly online submission, so ask whether your college wants a bound copy for its own library. And the circular does not state how a change of title after synopsis approval is handled beyond the standing condition that the title and synopsis must have been approved by MUHS; a change goes through the college to the university, not through the dissertation itself.
On the marks the dissertation carries, the examiner who assesses it and the relation between thesis acceptance and the final examination, MUHS follows the National Medical Commission's Post Graduate Medical Education Regulations 2023[1] as every state health university does; our guide at /guides/nmc-pgmer-2023-thesis-rules-explained covers those provisions.
A pre-upload check drawn from the circular
- Title and synopsis approval letter in hand, with the title matching the dissertation exactly
- Eligibility granted; the certificate reference number ready for page two of the certificate file
- Title page at size 20 centred; second page with course, subject, admission year and title; index on page three
- Nine chapters in the circular's order, with the methods carrying all twelve elements
- Times New Roman 12, black, 1.15 spacing throughout the body
- Patient identities concealed in photographs; no names in the master chart
- Master chart as an Excel file, uploaded on its own tab
- Certificate file: completion certificate signed by guide and Dean, the detail page, the synopsis approval, the IEC approval, the superintendent's certificate
- Consent form in English and in every local language actually used
- Fee paid; the college's own forwarding date, not the university's, treated as the deadline
MDThesis mentors read a dissertation against the circular before the college does. The dissertation stays the student's own work; the university's decision stays the university's.
Sources
- Maharashtra University of Health Sciences, Controller of Examinations, Circular No. 25/2025, Guidelines for Submission of Dissertation for Postgraduate Courses students admitted in 2024-2025 and onwards under Faculty of Medicine, citing Board of Examination Resolution No. 14/2025, with Annexure I certificate templates; read from the scanned copy republished by Government Medical College, Jalgaon: https://gmcjjh.edu.in/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Circular-No.-25-2025-dtd.-18-03-2025-1.pdf
- Maharashtra University of Health Sciences, Controller of Examinations, Circular No. 50/2021 and Circular No. 48/2022, Submission of Dissertations through Online System for Postgraduate Courses under Faculty of Medicine, citing Board of Examinations Resolution No. 39/2016; read from copies uploaded by a medical news site, as the university's own site did not serve them where we looked
- Maharashtra University of Health Sciences, MD General Medicine syllabus, dissertation clause: https://www.muhs.ac.in/upload/syllabus/MD_Gen_Medicine.pdf
- Maharashtra University of Health Sciences, Annexure XI to Direction No. 04/2015, the PhD thesis format, cited only to mark where it differs from the MD and MS circular
- MUHS online dissertation and synopsis portal, as the circulars direct colleges and candidates to it