Last Updated on: 30th December 2020, 12:18 am
The most recent centralized test MDCAT 2020 for admission to medical and dental colleges across the country has been the subject of controversy after many candidates brought Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMC) to court over ambiguous test questions on curriculum, assessment errors and mistakes in candidate’s data.
The Medical Education Regulatory Authority, PMC, conducted the Medical and Dental College (MDCAT 2020) admission test on November 29 and a special mdcat entry test on December 13 for those who missed the first test due to illness with coronavirus.
A total of 121,181 candidates took the centralized test in major cities in the country, and 67,611 of them qualified with more than 60% of the grades.
The Sindh Government Requires The Retest
Amid criticism of the medical inspectorate, the Sindh government has now also strongly supported students and requested permission to take an entrance test for local medical and dental colleges themselves.
PML-N has also presented a resolution to the Punjab Assembly calling for the MDCAT 2020 results to be re-examined in the presence of candidates and for an FIA investigation to be published into the irregularities of the test.
The Candidates are Calling For The Papers To Be Checked Again
Several protesting candidates called for their papers to be re-examined, some called for 50% pass marks, others wanted the mercy marks or MDCAT to be re-awarded.
Candidate Abdul Hadi said the PMC should release the keys for all test patterns A, B, C, and D along with other keys and papers revealing 14 ambiguous MCQs that it claims marks of grace have been given and instead review all of them Papers again and counting them after they are published.
He also called for the FIA’s report on the MDCAT 2020 paper leak to be published.
Complaining that talented applicants should not be denied the right to medical and dental training, he said: Please re-examine the test with transparency. We want keys from every code role.
Bilal Yousafzai wondered why the PMC hadn’t uploaded the MDCAT 2020 questionnaire and official keys to its website.
Protesters have also reached out on social media to express their anger against the PMC.
Human rights activist Jibran Nasir sided with the protesting students, saying the PMC removed 14 questions from the MDCAT after admitting they were ambiguous.
“These [ambiguous] questions made up 7% of the test. In addition, Sindh candidates had at least 18 off-curriculum questions. That’s another 9% of the evidence.
“This shows incompetence and shameful behavior by the PMC academic body in not applying their thoughts at all,” he said in a tweet.
However, the candidates who passed the MDCAT 2020 stated that PMC’s admissions procedure was fair and urged those who failed to kindly accept the entrance test results.
PMC Denies The Allegations
PMC Vice President Ali Raza dismissed the claim that some MDCAT questions were incorrectly graded, stating that not only had all positions been correctly graded, but all candidates had received recognition marks.
He also said that some students did not take the test due to a technical error that was immediately fixed.
Raza said there was no human involvement in the paper review while the PMC made 27 questions difficult to decide on the university that the selected candidate will enroll in.