Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan has ordered a probe into alleged irregularities in the Post-Graduate Medical Entrance Test (PGMET)-2014. A.P. State Council of Higher Education Chairman Prof. L. Venugopal Reddy has been asked to conduct the probe and submit a report at the earliest.
The order came after a day full of protests by aggrieved candidates who produced a bunch of papers with information about the past academic performance of the first 500 students, vis-a-vis their current ranking in PGMET-2014. They pointed out, for example, that a candidate who got first rank in the PG entrance came at 4,429th position in ComedK (Karnataka), while the third ranker was disqualified in the last AP PG entrance. National president of the Lok Satta Party Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan called on the Governor, detailing him on the evidence collected by the students, and urged him to order a high-level enquiry. “I have asked for PGMET-2014 to be cancelled and a fresh test conducted,” he said. “I have also urged for a thorough enquiry to bring the culprits to book, their assets seized and a strict punishment meted out to them,” he said. Later in the evening, the students called on Telugu Desam president N. Chandrababu Naidu and sought his help in getting justice. Doctors Sainath Reddy and Hruday said that of the estimated 16,000 candidates who took the PGMET, about 8,000 had qualified for admission for approximately 2,400-2,500 PG seats in the State. Of this, 700 are government seats, including 200 in the ‘clinical’ category.
