Petition to cancel PMET: Hearing put off till June 19

CHANDIGARH: The Baba Farid University of Health Sciences today made it clear before the Punjab and Haryana High Court that a candidate could take a look at the Punjab Pre-Medical Entrance Test (PMET) question paper, along with subject experts, for removing mistakes, if any.

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 17

The Baba Farid University of Health Sciences today made it clear before the Punjab and Haryana High Court that a candidate could take a look at the Punjab Pre-Medical Entrance Test (PMET) question paper, along with subject experts, for removing mistakes, if any.

The offer was made during the hearing of a petition filed against the state government and other respondents for cancelling the test conducted by the university on May 17.

Justice Rakesh Kumar Jain fixed June 19 as the next date. In their petition through senior advocate Girish Agnihotri, Ritika of Patiala and other petitioners contended that they appeared in the test, but it was held in an unfair and arbitrary manner.

As such, it was required to be cancelled before directing the university to conduct the test afresh. In alternative, directions were required to be issued to the respondents to get the test conducted through an independent agency or institution.

The petitioners added the university tried to conduct the examination for admission to MBBS seats in Punjab in a clandestine manner to hide its incompetency. No less than 200 objective multiple choice questions were required to be solved in 180 minutes. The examination was conducted at a single centre — Jalandhar-based Lovely Professional University — and around 15,500 students appeared in it.

But there were glaring mistakes in the question paper. Several questions were not having correct options. Some questions were repeated, besides queries with more than one correct option. Some other questions made no sense at all as the numerical values given in the question paper were not possible.