MDCAT controversy rages on amid lawsuits

Islamabad : The controversy is raging over the recent centralised test for admission to medical and dental colleges in the country.

Since the regulator for medical education, PMC, held the Medical & Dental College Admission Test (MDCAT) on November 29 and a special test on December 13 for those, who missed the first one for being down with novel coronavirus, the candidates have staged street protests in Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Hyderabad, and other cities alleging discrepancies in the test and its results.

Many have taken the PMC to the court over out-of-syllabus and ambiguous test questions, marking mistakes, and faulty candidate data.

Now, even the Sindh government has thrown its full weight behind them demanding permission to hold an entry test for the local medical and dental colleges by itself.

Also, the opposition PML-N has submitted a resolution to the Punjab Assembly demanding the rechecking of the MDCAT papers in the presence of candidates and release of an FIA inquiry into the test irregularities.

A total of 121,181 candidates sat the centralised test in the country’s major cities and 67,611 of them qualified it by securing over 60 per cent marks.

Many protesting candidates demanded the rechecking of their papers, some called for the grant of passing marks to be 50 per cent and others wanted grace marks or MDCAT to be held again.

Candidate Abdul Hadi said the PMC should make the keys of all A, B, C, and D test patterns along with other keys and paper public, reveal the 14 ambiguous MCQs about which it claims grace marks have been granted, and recheck all papers instead of recounting after making them public.

He also demanded the release of the report of the FIA probe into MDCAT paper leak.

Candidate Omama Fayaz said the talented aspirants shouldn’t be denied their right to medical and dental education.

“Please recheck the test with transparency. We want keys of every code paper,” she said.

Bilal Yousafzai wondered why the PMC didn't upload the MDCAT question paper and official keys on its website.

The protesters have also taken to social media to vent their anger against the PMC and press for their demands.

Rights activist M Jibran Nasir sided with the protesting students and said the PMC had deleted 14 MDCAT questions admitting they're ambiguous.

“Those [ambiguous] questions were seven per cent of the test. Also, for candidates based in Sindh, at least 18 questions were out of the syllabus. That is another nine per cent of the test. This shows incompetence and shameful conduct of PMC's Academic Board of not applying their mind at all,” he said in a tweet.

However, the candidates, who passed the MDCAT, declared the PMC admission exercise fair and urged the unsuccessful ones to accept the test results graciously.

PMC vice-president Ali Raza rejected the allegation of incorrect marking of some MDCAT questions and said not only were all papers marked correctly but all candidates got grace marks as well. He also said some students were shown absent from the test due to a technical error, which was immediately fixed.

Ali Raza said there was no human involvement in paper checking, while the PMC made 27 questions difficult to decide about the college the successful candidate is to be enrolled in.