Candidates show mistakes in PMET question papers to HC

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 19

Two candidates for pre-medical entrance test today tallied question papers and answer keys with NCERT books before the Punjab and Haryana High Court. The candidates claimed discrepancies in 35 queries in their question papers.

The petitioner-students had earlier sought directions from the High Court to permit four candidates to have a look at the question papers, taken back after being attempted, to enable them to point out discrepancies. Taking a note of their request, the High Court granted go-ahead to two of the candidates.

The Baba Farid University of Health Sciences had, on the previous date of hearing, made it clear that a candidate could take a look at the pre-medical entrance test question paper, along with subject experts, for pointing out mistakes, if any.

The offer was made during the hearing of a petition filed against the State of Punjab and other respondents for cancelling pre-medical test conducted by the varsity on May 17. Taking up the case, Justice Rakesh Kumar Jain fixed June 22 as the next date.

In their petition through senior advocate Girish Agnihotri, Ritika of Patiala and other petitioners contended that they appeared in the PMET on May 17. But the test was held in an unfair and arbitrary manner.

As such, it was required to be cancelled before directing the varsity to conduct the test afresh. In the 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 varsity 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 for the examination.

But there were glaring mistakes and patent errors in the question paper. Several questions did not have 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.