The Farook College at Feroke has condemned the move to tarnish its image in the name of the MBBS entrance examination conducted by Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) on April 25. The AMU authorities, in an unprecedented move, withheld the results of 3,939 students who took the entrance test at Farook College on the ground that a large number of them had qualified for MBBS. Although the AMU had 11 centres across the country, Farook College was the sole centre for Kerala, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu.
What apparently provoked the AMU authorities was that 30 students who took the test at Farook College qualified for MBBS, when the remaining 40 seats were bagged by students who took the examination in the centres elsewhere. Out of the 140 seats, 70 seats have been reserved for students from Aligarh.
In a statement here on Thursday, college Principal E.P. Imbichi Koya said the ‘suspicion’ raised by the AMU authorities smacked of their strong anti-South Indian sentiments. Like elsewhere, the entrance test was conducted by a team of invigilators from Aligarh, strictly following the university norms. ‘‘We never even had any idea how many students were taking the examination, let alone their identities. The AMU authorities had maintained utmost secrecy about the examination,’’ said Prof. Imbichi Koya. He Last year, nearly 60 per cent of the students qualified for the national medical entrance examination conducted by the CBSE were from Kerala.’’
‘‘We cannot close our eyes to the fact that 50 per cent of the students in different centres of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) are from Kerala. In Delhi AIIMS alone, out of the 360 students, 97 are Malayalis.