Medicos perplexed over PG admissions

With resentment brewing among the student community, the decision to conduct the test without proper prior intimation may lead to another agitation, much on the lines of one undertaken for PMT. This, some of the students feel, will give the government a good reason to postpone the test, thus bringing the matter backto square one.

Some medical graduates while speaking to The Indian Express said that deserving medical graduates in the State have been silently suffering the injustice meted out to them by the government, as it failed to implement the decision of the Supreme Court for almost a decade.

Maharashtra is the only major state in the country, where pre post-graduate admission tests are yet to be conducted.

The SC in its decision dated November 22, 1991, had made it very clear that `admissions to post-graduate courses in medical colleges should be based on selection test and not on the basis of MBBS results alone’.

The three-member bench has cited Article 14 of the Constitution to say that there should be selection test as the post-graduate examinations have become very competitive.

After several petitions by students’ groups from all over the State, the State Health Minister, Dr Daulatrao Aher, finally decided in principle to conduct the test from 1999 onwards and made an announcement to thiseffect in the State Assembly during its summer session earlier this year.

Later, the State Government came out with a GR on May 20, 1998, (vide PGA.1394/3049/403/98/Education-1) stating that the entrance test will be conducted in January 1999.

However, no steps have yet been taken to actually conduct the tests, the students alleged. Even the GR has not been properly publicised leaving several graduates groping in the dark. As this will be first ever pre post-graduate test, the students are in confusion over the exact pattern and syllabi.

Also, as the dates have not yet been formally declared, the students feel that they would be left with very little time to actually prepare for the tests.

Interestingly, even the Dean of the GMC, from where the admissions to the PG courses for Nagpur University students is conducted, does not have any information about the test.