Tamil Nadu MGR Medical University has postponed the announcement of the results of the first-year MBBS examinations with its website urging the deans of all medical colleges to allow the students to move to second year.
The decision involves about 2,500 students who took the first-year MBBS examination in government and private medical colleges. The website announces: “Due to unforeseen circumstances the university is not in a position to publish the results of first MBBS August 2012 examination. The same will be published within… two-three weeks’ time.”
Explaining the circumstances, Vice-Chancellor Mayil Vahanan Natarajan said the university has filed a writ petition in the Madras High Court. “We filed the writ petition urging the Medical Council of India to give us written directions to raise the standards of the syllabus, assessment and evaluation.”
Earlier, based on the MCI’s affidavit in court stating that the varsity could go ahead with its plan to improve the quality of medical education in the State, the university had made alterations.
The new rules state that a student must have scored 50 per cent in all the individual papers he or she writes in order to be declared as having passed. The required minimum attendance percentage was also upped from MCI’s 75 to 90.
“Though we went ahead based on MCI’s position in the affidavit, we are yet to receive a written communication from them. That would put us on sure ground legally,” Dr. Mayil Vahanan said. The dental and pharmacy councils have given the go-ahead for their streams, according to him. So until the orders come, announcement of results will have to be postponed. Results are usually out in the first week of October.
What has caused confusion among first-year students is the subsequent announcement about going ahead to the second year. A student from a city-based government medical college says: “Not only confusion, but we are all facing mental agony too. In the BDS first-year results that were released last week, only 45 per cent of the students passed. Even as we are seriously worried about our fate, this comes.”
Under the ‘break system’, students who have failed will have to rejoin the first year as a separate batch six months after the commencement of the first-year course.
“All students who have failed, when the announcement comes, will have to go back to the first year. There is no provision for them to continue,” the Vice Chancellor clarifies.
