The Islamabad High Court (IHC) has issued notices to the Ministry of National Health Services, the Ministry of Interior, the Pakistan Medical Council (PMC) and others on Tuesday, pertaining to a petition challenging the results of the recently-held Medical and Dental Colleges Admission Tests (MDCAT).
The petition was filed in accordance with the last will of late scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan. However, Supreme Court advocate Mohammad Waqas Malik as co-petitioner pursued the case on Monday, and requested the high court to nullify the results of the MDCAT. It cited the Ministry of National Health Services, the federation through the Ministry of Interior, the PMC, the Ministry of Law and other departments as respondents.
The petitioners pleaded that the PMC Conduct of Examination Regulations 2021 may be set aside for being contrary to the fundamental rights and the respondents be directed to not expose young students to “violent policies”.
The court also sought a record of cases registered against medical students from the interior ministry and asked authorities to inform the court about the process of conducting the National Licencing Examination (NLE).
Advocate Malik contended that a centralized order cannot be issued after the 18th Amendment and urged the court to set aside the PMC Conduct of Examination Regulations 2021.
He added that baton-charging of young doctors was tarnishing the country’s image globally. “Introducing a new system for conducting exams without giving students appropriate time is not right,” he said, adding that they were entitled to higher education on merit.
Earlier, soon after the results were declared, confusion had prevailed among the 200,000 candidates who appeared in the MDCAT. PMC later announced on social media that the result cards that had been emailed should be ignored as they had a number of mistakes.
As per the results, there was a difference of around 30 to 40 marks in the total. When the result cards were shared by the candidates on social media, the commission responded by saying that they should ignore the results.
Later, it was announced that around 125,000 candidates — 65 per cent overall — had failed to get passing marks [137/210].
The hearing for the petition has been adjourned for three weeks.
