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Cancel admission of 856 dental students in MP, panel recommends
A four-member committee constituted at the order of the Madhya Pradesh high court’s Jabalpur bench has found the admission of over 800 dental college students in the state illegal and recommended their cancellation.
A four-member committee constituted at the order of the Madhya Pradesh high court’s Jabalpur bench has found the admission of over 800 dental college students in the state illegal and recommended their cancellation.
The Jabalpur bench constituted the committee on December 16, 2016, and asked it to shortlist the names of students who took admission on the basis of their Class 12 board examination marks and not through an entrance test.
The decision came after students challenged the Dental Council of India’s (DCI) decision to cancel their admission on the ground that they did not take any entrance test.
The committee comprising Shashi Gandhi, joint director of medical education, TR Thapak, chairperson of admission and fee regulatory committee, and representatives of Jabalpur’s Medical University and DCI, has sent its recommendations to the director of medical education.
In 2014, 871 students were given admission to various dental colleges in the state. The committee found that only 15 of them wrote the Dental and Medical Admission Test (DMAT) conducted by Association of Private Dental and Medical Colleges (APDMC) of Madhya Pradesh and qualified.
“Following the court order, we scrutinised the admission of 871 students. Of the total, 856 admissions were found illegal. Now, the directorate is going to convey its decision to deans of the colleges concerned,” Gandhi said.
The committee issued the order on Friday last.
Students, however, feel they were cheated by medical colleges as well as the medical education department.
“I applied for the admission after seeing a piece of advertisement for direct admission to BDS course. All the documents were verified by the directorate of medical education of Madhya Pradesh government in 2014. I was also registered by Dental Council of India (DCI). How can I be held responsible if there was any irregularity?” a second year BDS student from Bhopal asked.
“I didn’t commit any fraud. I trusted a piece of advertisement coming from private dental colleges, like many others. None else than the directorate of medical education was involved in the process. But my future looks bleak now for none of my faults. Who will return my three years and my career to me?” he added.
The Dental Students Welfare Association of India (DSWAI) has even demanded action against authorities who accepted students after verifying all the documents.
“Like what happened in Vyapam scam, here too the sufferers are only students. If their admissions were not according to the rules, why did directorate of medical education allow the students to study and why did Dental Council of India (DCI) register them? In this entire episode not only 856 students but also 856 families are undergoing trauma,” DSWAI national secretary Jeetesh Tamrakar said.
“We respect the court order but we will lodge our protest against the authorities whose fault caused injustice to students,” Tamrakar said.
The December 16 decision of the high court came one-and-a-half years after Punjab and Haryana high court verdict that declared the admission of dental students on the basis of marks of Class 12 as invalid.
After the Punjab and Haryana high court’s decision, the DCI ordered the cancellation of admission of all the students of 2014-15 batch. But, colleges in Madhya Pradesh moved the Jabalpur high court that allowed the students to appear in the first year exam.
