PESHAWAR: The change in criteria for admission to medical and dental colleges against the quota for foreign/dual national students has caused unrest among the students and their parents.
Some of the aggrieved students have moved the Peshawar High Court (PHC), which has already granted them stay on the admission against the same quota.
The parents believe that the overnight change in the criteria is against the legal procedure and allegedly aimed at accommodating blue-eyed students.
Pakistan Medical Commission through two successive notifications dated December 23, and December 28, last year informed the principals concerned to avoid giving admission to those foreign nationals who have passed their 12 grade examination from Pakistan.
Such a restriction cannot be implemented with retrospective effect, said a legal expert. He said that even if such a limitation is to be implemented, its execution would require at least two-year time - a period needed for doing FSc, he said.
After the notifications, all the students, who had applied for admission under the quota for dual nationals and had passed their intermediate examination from Pakistan were declared ineligible and a separate list was released inviting some 37 students for interviews.
The list shows that a candidate who has failed to qualify the entry test - Medical and Dental College Admission Test (MDCAT) - has also been called for the interview.
According to rules, those securing 55 percent marks for medical colleges and 45 percent marks for dental colleges would be eligible for the admission.
One of the students has secured 54.5 percent marks and he has also been called for the interview. Similarly, one student whose date of birth is 2005 and he claims to have done two FScs - one from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and another from Punjab - has also been called for the interview. It is humanly not possible to do FSc at an age of 17 years and that, too, two times, said a parent.
There are other students in the final list, who, too, have claimed to have done their FSc two times and they are called for the interview.
The parent alleged that the criteria had been changed for ulterior motives for likes and dislikes in the admission.
Some of the students had moved the PHC against the changes to the criteria. The single-bench of PHC comprising Justice Fazal Subhan admitted their petition(s) for a full hearing
The court stopped the respondents, including the Khyber Medical University from converting the medical colleges’ self-finance seats for dual nationals to the general ones until further orders.
The central admission committee, however, issued a separate list of the students seeking admission against the dual nationals’ quota despite the court orders. The petitioners had been excluded from the new list and the remaining were called for interview for the admission.
The affected students and their parents believed that the medical university wanted to transfer the foreign nationals’ quota to a general self-finance scheme.
They urged the quarters concerned to review the decision to enable them to avail their genuine right of getting admission in the medical colleges as per the initial merit list.