Side effect on pvt colleges: High Court says keep OMR copies

Exam centres told to scan each OMR sheet, with a copy each to principal secy (Home), secy of admission and fee regulator.

Private medical and dental colleges that have allegedly sold hundreds of seats in the last few years, a fraud that activists say is bigger than the PMT scam, were on Thursday asked by the MP High Court to keep scanned copies of OMR sheets at multiple places to avoid manipulation. The order came three days before the Association of Private Dental and Medical Colleges of Madhya Pradesh conducts an entrance examination at 12 centres, five of them outside MP.

A division bench directed that examination centres should scan each OMR sheet and send one scanned copy each to the Principal Secretary (Home) and Secretary of Admission and Fee Regulatory Committee (AFRC), a statutory body for private professional colleges; these should be tallied before the final result is announced.

The examination was first scheduled for June 21 but postponed following litigation and allegations that it will be rigged like in the past. A key official arrested recently in connection with the Vyapam scam has confessed that nearly all examinations had been manipulated in recent years.

The court order came in response to a PIL filed by a former independent legislator, who has played a key role in exposing the Vyapam scam. In May, the appellate authority of AFRC had hinted at a massive scam in admission to private medical colleges saying they followed a procedure that was neither transparent nor based on merit. It had noted that between 2010 and 2013, 721 government quota seats in six private colleges were filled on the last day of counselling in September 2013.

But in Thursday’s order the court referred to the practice of students keeping their OMR sheets blank that are later filled in connivance with officials, part of the modus operandi in the Vyapam scam.

When the APDMC expressed it wouldn’t be possible to arrange scanners at centres outside the state, the court allowed that they be used only at centres within the state.

Source | Indian Express | 10 July 2015