PU orders inquiry into students’ fake medical certificates to make up for attendance shortage

Explaining the procedure for submission of these medical certificates, a professor of PU told Chandigarh Newsline, “The students furnish the medical certificates to their respective departments, which are then forwarded to the office of PU’s Chief Medical Officer Devinder Dhawan for approval.”

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“This has been going on for the last five to six years. This time, when I was going through the submitted certificates, it came to my notice that many of the medical certificates were from the same doctor,” stated CMO Dhawan. “Once these cases were highlighted, I informed the Vice-Chancellor, and a committee was formed to report this to the Punjab Medical Council.”

In order to keep a check on this practice of submission of false certificates, all the medical certificates being submitted are now being screened by the office of the CMO. “At the most, what we can do is warn the doctors, and if that does not help, we report the misuse of their powers as doctors to the Medical Council. As far as students are concerned, if they submit medical certificates for illnesses for a long duration, we have now started asking them to furnish details of the tests conducted and other prescription. If students are unable to submit the required documents, their medical certificates are not approved,” said officials from PU’s Bhai Ghanaiya Ji Institute of Health.

This year, many of the submitted medical certificates were issued by Dr R Gupta, a radiologist who runs Gupta Ultrasound and X-Ray lab in Sector 34. He has, however, denied any involvement in issuing false medical certificates.

According to officials of PU’s Health Centre, in the recent past, cases have also been reported wherein letterheads of doctors were being used without their permission. This year, the university officials found several certificates issued under the letterhead of Dr Anupam Jindal from NINS Brain & Spine Hospital, Sector 34.

However, according to Dr Jindal, he has not been practising in Chandigarh for the last two years, and only practises medicine in Mohali now. “The said hospital was shut down in September 2014. There are no records of these medical certificates being issued either. When each time a medical certificate is issued, it is mentioned in the hospital records. Since I have now received information of my letterheads being misused, I will be filing an FIR in the matter shortly,” Dr Jindal told Chandigarh Newsline.

“No one wants to get debarred, as that will result in an entire academic year getting wasted. This is the reason why students try all means possible to meet the necessary attendance requirement of 75 per cent,” said a PU student.