Flawed result snuffed out his life
Gautam killed himself for ‘flunking’ CPMT. He passed in the corrected result, reports Gaurav Saigal.
Dilip Kumar Gautam always wanted to be a doctor. And his roll number figured in the revised second list of successful candidates in the Uttar Pradesh Combined Pre-Medical Test declared on Thursday.
But no one was celebrating at his home. The 25-year-old had killed himself on June 15, a day after the Veer Bahadur Singh Poorvanchal University declared the faulty first list of those who had made it.
His family said Gautam was depressed when he did not find his name in the first list. He killed himself on the rail tracks. That faulty list, as admitted by the university authorities, had led to angry protests in the city and had led to a probe ordered by the state government.
On June 16, the university that conducted the examination accepted that a “technical error” had caused gross inaccuracy in the results. Vice-Chancellor Prof K.P. Singh said, “The error occurred while preparing the sequential statement for the answer key.”
But that error caused the death of a young life. There was no way it could be corrected, according to Gautam’s father Omprakash, a pharmacist. Gautam was his only son.
He was informed about his son’s result by reporters who had been keeping track of the developments.
Struggling to hold back his tears, Omprakash spoke of his son and why he committed suicide. “When he did not see his number in the list of successful candidates, he was upset… that’s why the took the decision,” he said.
In the fresh results, Gautam has an overall rank of 9,850 and 735 under the scheduled caste category. The result was good enough for a dental science seat. Former vice-chancellor of the UP King George’s University of Dental Sciences Prof C.P. Govila said: “He obviously could not have made it in to the MBBS course but he could have got a seat in the BDS course.”
Vice-Chancellor resigns Soon after declaring the corrected CPMT results, Purvanchal University Vice-Chancellor Dr K.P. Singh tendered his resignation to Governor T.V. Rajeswar who accepted it.
Apparently unaware of Singh’s move, Chief Minister Mayawati wrote to the Governor recommending removal of the Vice-Chancellor.
Singh was the chairman of the committee that conducted the CPMT examination and has been found guilty of laxity and declaring faulty, erroneous and incorrect results, which led to statewide chaos.
Cabinet Secretary Shashank Shekhar Singh clarified in response to Mayawati’s letter. “The Government is not aware till now about the resignation of Dr Singh and the letter recommending his dismissal and action against him was sent to the Governor this morning,” he said.
The Cabinet Secretary, quoting from a inquiry committee report, said that it was detected during the checking that only the chairman, Dr KP Singh had signed on the keys of the CPMT results and four other members of the committee were not even involved in preparation of the results in any manner.
The inquiry committee opined that the entire responsibility of making wrong keys and not rechecking the keys during the processing of the results was that of Dr KP Singh.