DNB Doctors protest outside NBE office alleging irregularities

Pointing out that there was a "decoding error" of the Board in swapping answer sheets of 48 candidates, the doctors under the umbrella of DNB doctors association has recently written to the Executive Director of NBE.

In fact, the doctors have alleged that NBE was failing the DNB students on purpose to generate money.

Medical Dialogues had earlier reported about the instances of alleged mixing up of copies in the DNB examination. Answer Sheets of at least 48 students had got mixed up in one of the four exams conducted in March 21 and the NBE, in charge of conducting the exam, had allegedly termed it as a "decoding error".

The issue came to light when one of the candidates who had failed in the exam results declared on July 30, 2021, filed a request for a photocopy of his answer sheet in August 2021 and two months later, when he got back his answer sheets, he discovered that the copy of the answer sheet of paper IV belonged to another candidate.

NBE had finally admitted the mix up after much delay along with back and forth correspondence. In fact, the applicant doctor came to know that the mix up had happened for 47 other candidates as well. Ultimately, NBE declared the revised results on November 24.

After the matter became public, several other doctors also wished to obtain the photocopies of their answer sheets. However, as the one month time frame for applying after the declaration of results was over, several doctors took resort of the Right to Information Act. Several doctors have sought copies of their answer sheets and they have also challenged NBE's refusal for providing copies of answer sheets before the Chief Information Commissioner.

Also Read: Amid Shocking Pass Percentages, 'Decoding Error' by NBE Changes Pass/Fail Status of Candidates

Now, the doctors pursuing the DNB courses have taken the path of protest and alleging irregularities in the DNB PG degree exams, they carried on an agitation near the National Board of Examinations (NBEMS) office in Dwarka on Wednesday.

Earlier the pass percentages in the DNB/DrNB final theory exam had shocked the entire medical fraternity s it was revealed that less than 20 per cent of aspirants had cleared the exam in specialties including Nephrology, and Orthopaedics.

The numbers were not so good in specialties such as Hospital Administration, Otorhinolaryngology, Paediatrics, Pathology, Surgical Oncology, and Emergency Medicine as well as less than 40 per cent of the total candidates had cleared the exam last year.

Referring to this, the doctors under the umbrella of Association of DNB doctors protested in front of NBEMS office and writing about the matter to the Executive Director of NBEMS, the association mentioned, "On continuous digging, it was found that there was swapping of the papers of 48 candidates in one specialty of orthopedics in the session of December 2020. Rest of the specialties and the sessions are not investigated."

Clearly, there is something wrong with the DNB evaluation and examination pattern, indicated the letter.

In fact, the doctors also claimed that NBEMS was failing the students on purpose for the purpose of generating money.

While commenting on the matter, Dr Raman Kumar, DNB (Radio Diagnosis) informed the New Indian Express (NIE), that NBEMS had accepted in the RTI that sapping of the answer sheets had happened due to its decoding error, which was present in the soft copy and not in the hard copy.

Pointing out that either the soft copies or hard copies were mismatched or manual tampering was done, he further referred to the fact that NBE hadn't filed any FIR or police complaint regarding the issue.

"There is a recent change from manual evaluation to digital evaluation. The answer sheets in RTI are found to be blank as if never evaluated. In few well-written answers, they have given zero marks without any application of mind," he told NIE.

Referring to this issue, the association wrote on its Twitter handle, "The so called technical error which swapped papers of 48 candidates of DNB Final exam was only found on softcopy & not on hard copy. Clearly the hard copies were overlooked or tampering was done on soft copies."

Also Read:Abysmal pass percentages haunt DNB doctors