Row over digital evaluation of doctors’ answer sheets

Balwant Garg

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Tribune News Service

Faridkot, October 29

Starting of digital evaluation of answer sheets of medical post-graduates in six medical colleges in the state has stirred a controversy. After they were declared failed in their final year examination, many doctors in the MD/MS course have approached the Punjab and Haryana High Court, challenging the digital evaluation system, introduced by the Baba Farid University of Health Sciences (BFUHS) this year.

As many as 126 out of the total 480 MD/MS and post-graduate diploma courses’ medical students in the six medical colleges in the state failed this time. These students had appeared in their final examinations in June this year at the end of their three-year course.

As many as 32 of these 126 failed doctors have filed a writ petition in the High Court, alleging they were failed by the BFUHS as their answer sheets were evaluated digitally by novice examiners who were not given proper training before implementing the decision of e-checking. They alleged that the BFUHS had not got the approval of the Medical Council of India (MCI) before introducing the digital evaluation system.

However, the authoritiesclaimed that the digital evaluation move was in sync with the Union government’s Digital India programme.

The e-transfer of question papers and digital evaluation was to help curb paper leaks and tampering with answer sheets, said Dr Raj Bahadur, Vice-Chancellor, BFUHS.

The BFUHS is the first medical university in the North and the second in the country to implement the system of digital evaluation. The Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences in Karnataka was the first medical varsity in the country to implement this system, said Dr Raj Bahadur.

Refuting the allegations that examiners were not well-trained, causing about 25 per cent failure rate in the MD/MS exams, the Vice-Chancellor said an agency was roped in to provide technological support for the digital examination system. The MD/MS result was almost same last year when there was no digital evaluation, said authorities.

Under the new system, answer sheets were scanned by the software provider and uploaded on for evaluation on the same day after the exam. Every answer sheet is allotted a barcode, an optical machine-readable representation of the roll number, so that the evaluator cannot identify the student.