KATHMANDU, Sept 5: A parliamentary committee meeting involving stakeholders of medical education held on Wednesday at Singha Durbar has directed the government to form a probe committee to promptly investigate the errors observed in the results of the Medical Education Common Entrance Examinations (MECEE) for MBBS and Public Health published by the Medical Education Commission (MEC).

A regular meeting attended by Minister for Education, Science and Technology Bidya Bhattarai, members of the Education, Health, and Information Technology Committee of the House of Representatives and officials from the ministry and the commission concluded that the MEC had made serious errors in the exam results and directed the government to correct these errors by promptly forming an inquiry committee to probe into the matter and submit a report to the committee within ten days. In the meeting, lawmaker Ammar Bahadur Thapa, chairman of the committee, said that following a serious mistake made by the MEC in the results of the examinations, one student’s score was incorrectly assigned to another student. 

Experts in the medical education sector have, however, asserted that the ten-day ultimatum has no significance, lamenting the lack of vigilance from the top-level members of the commission during the examination process. Former dean of the Institute of Medicine(IOM) Prof Dr Jagadish Prasad Agrawal claimed that the error is not an isolated incident citing similar problems in prior editions of the examinations. 

“Every year since the inception of the common examination, similar incidents have come to light,” he told Republica, adding, “This shows that the top-level officials at the commission have not given adequate importance to the examination, always offloading the blame on the Information and Technology officials.”

Admitting that the MEC made a serious mistake in publishing the results, Minister Bhattarai, committed before the committee to investigate the matter and proceed ahead accordingly. Member secretary of the commission Krishna Prasad Kapri, although present at the meeting, was reluctant to share the conclusion of the meeting. “Only the lawmakers in the committee have been permitted to speak about the issue,” he said, “The commission is not clear about the directive.” 

Dr Agrawal pointed out that this irresponsible attitude of officials concerned is an example of the inadequate significance given to the examinations.

Earlier in the day, a group of aspiring medical students staged a peaceful demonstration at Maitighar on Wednesday against the grave error in the publication of the results by the commission. The protest took place a day after members of the National Assembly raised serious concerns regarding irregularities in results surrounding the examination, demanding that the matter be thoroughly investigated. 

The protesters demanded that the MEC publish the question set, answer key and the Optical Mark Recognition(OMR) paper they submitted during their examination. In the absence of publication of these exam materials, students are simply notified of their scores, without any critical space for checking whether their answers have been marked properly. In addition, every year, a group of students aspiring to pursue medical studies are subjected to repeated examination by the commission citing mistakes in the examination process. On Monday, the commission issued a notice inviting concerned students to apply for accessing their OMR sheet and answer key on an individual basis while the decision to publish the question set is being discussed internally at the commission. 

Instead of preparing for their entrance examination in medical studies, the students concerned about the transparency in results of their own upcoming entrance examination chose to stage the demonstration alleging the MEC with grave corruption.

 
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