HC Dismisses Plea Challenging KNRUHS MBBS First Year Exam Pattern
Hyderabad: Opining that the skipping MCQs was a minor deviation from the exam pattern as prescribed by the erstwhile Medical Council of India (MCI), now National Medical Commission (NMC), the Telangana High Court recently dismissed a batch of petitions challenging the first year MBBS exam pattern of the Kaloji Narayana Rao University of Health Sciences (KNRUHS).
The HC bench comprising of Justice B Vijaysen Reddy was of the opinion that the students should have approached the court as soon as they found the exam pattern to be in violation of the prescribed format.
Thus, denying to entertain the plea, the bench observed, "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."
Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that the MBBS students had challenged the first-year examination pattern of KNRUHS and had claimed that the patterns were contradictory to the Regulations on Graduate Medical Education (Amendment) Act, 2019.
The plea had contended that the University didn't follow the inclusion of 20 percent multiple choice questions (MCQs) as per the National Medical Commission (NMC) guidelines.
It was further their contention that as many students couldn't cope with the online class mode, the question paper should have included the MCQs. Unfortunately, skipping the MCQ part, the university authorities opted for complete descriptive mode, the students pointed out.
"They did the same thing in the annual exam and also in the instant exam resulting in a huge failure percentage," the students alleged.
The students had also prayed before the High Court to issue directions upon the concerned authorities for conducting a fresh supplementary examination for them following the prescribed pattern.
Previously, the counsel representing NMC had sought an explanation from the University as to why it had deviated from the prescribed pattern.
Also Read: KNRUHS MBBS first year Exam Pattern: High Court reserves order
As per the latest media report by the Times of India, the counsel for NMC, Gorantla Pujitha also pointed out before the HC that the students approached the court only after failing in the main and instant exams as an afterthought.
After listening to the contentions the HC bench denied entertaining the plea and noted, "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."
Opining that the students should have approached the court immediately after they found the exam pattern to be in violation of the NMC guidelines, the HC bench further observed that skipping MCQs was a minor deviation.
The court was of the opinion that the students should be able to answer questions regardless of their form and the bench further noted at this outset, "It is not the case of the students that the questions given were not from the syllabus."
In fact, the court also denied providing any direction to the University for granting five grace marks to each of the students.
