MDCAT 2020: JI's Hafiz Naeem to go to court as students demand exam be reconducted

• JI Karachi chief says a commission must conduct a probe to determine who designed the exam
• Says students voted for PM Imran Khan for issues to be resolved but are left disappointed
• Demands to know why court orders were not followed directing only topics for syllabus be covered in the exam
  

Jamaat-e-Islami leader Hafiz Naeem-ur-Rehman, who leads the party's Karachi chapter, has declared he is going to approach the court, in solidarity with medical students who are demanding the Medical and Dental College Admission Test (MDCAT) be conducted again.

During a press conference in the city on Tuesday, he said that a commission must conduct a probe to determine who designed the exam. He said that democracy "is slaughtered in the assemblies".

"I will see what Murad Ali Shah does for medical students," he remarked.

Read more: MDCAT 2020 updated result announced by PMC

He said that students had protested the MDCAT exam and highlighted their concerns but to no avail.

"The prime minister is responsible for all of this," he said.

The JI leader said that the youth had voted for Prime Minister Imran Khan in the hope that their longstanding issues are resolved only to be confronted with new problems. "We will soon find out who is behind the MDCAT exam," he claimed.

Speaking of the Sindh health minister, he said Azra Pechuho has "ruined" the Children's Hospital.

Read more: Sindh health minister identifies grave irregularities in MDCAT 2020

He demanded to know why the results of medical students of Punjab and Sindh stood in such stark contrast.

Naeem-ur Rehman also questioned why, when the court had ordered the test to be conducted from topics within the syllabus, the order was not followed.

"We do not accept the offer of grace marks. We demand that the test be conducted again."

The test

The MDCAT was conducted across the country on November 29 after multiple delays and hiccups with students chiefly demanding deferment due to coronavirus and some complaining of a change in the syllabus on short notice.

The entry exam comprised 200 multiple-choice questions with the candidates given two hours to answer them.

Each MCQ carried five marks. The test had 80 Biology, 60 Chemistry, 40 Physics, and 20 English questions.

Results challenged

Following the results which came out on December 16, protests broke out over inaccuracies, with some students calling attention to the fact that they were marked erroneously absent.

Some students also complained of a mismatch between roll numbers and names.

The Pakistan Medical Commission then took the results offline for 30 hours for "reconciliation" and reissued results.

The PMC, in a statement said that "less than 2%" of the total number of students who took the exam faced these difficulties and submitted complaints.

"The PMC has re-checked and can confirm that 14 marks have been added to the result of each student who took the exam on the 29th of November 2020. Moreover, 7 marks have been added to the result of each student who took the exam on the 13th of December 2020," read the statement.

"However, no matter how small that number was, the complaints were of grave concern to the PMC," it added.