HC junks MBBS students’ plea on exam pattern

HC junks MBBS students’ plea on exam pattern

HC Refuses To Grant Five Grace Marks

SagarKumar.Mutha@timesgroup.com

Hyderabad: 12.12.2021

Justice B Vijaysen Reddy of the Telangana high court dismissed a batch of petitions filed by MBBS first year students who were failed in their annual examinations and hence were retained in the first year.

Students in their pleas contended that the National Medical Commission (NMC) changed the pattern of examinations from 2019 onwards and according to this new pattern, a portion of the questions should be in the form of multiple choice questions (MCQs). As many students could not cope up with the online class mode, the authorities should have included MCQs in the question paper. But unfortunately, the university authorities chose to skip MCQs and went in for complete descriptive mode, they said.

“They did the same thing in the annual exam and also in the instant exam resulting in a huge failure percentage,” they alleged.

The judge, however, did not agree with this line of thinking. “To give MCQs or not is the discretion of the university. Even the guidelines on the pattern of question paper issued by the Medical Council of India, now known as the National Medical Commission (NMC), are only advisory and not mandatory. Hence, we cannot direct the university to conduct a second supplementary exam for the failed candidates,” the judge said.

Agreeing with Gorantla Pujitha, counsel for NMC, who said that the students came to court only after failing in the main and instant exams as an afterthought, the judge said that the failed candidates should have come to court immediately after they found that the pattern was not in tune with NMC guidelines.

The judge also described skipping MCQs as a minor deviation. “It is not the case of the students that the questions given were not from the syllabus,” the judge said, while stressing the point that the students should be able to answer questions regardless of their form.

The court also refused to give any direction to the university to grant five grace marks to each of the students.