Bihar medicos miss exam due to election rally, SP says ‘baseless’ allegations

The superintendent of the examination centre disallowed the examinees to appear for the exam after they arrived 90 minutes late.

Political parties in Bihar seem to have thrown Covid-19 precautionary norms to the wind as people turn up in large numbers for election rallies following little etiquettes on social distancing.

Image for representation.(Getty Images/iStockphoto)

One such election rally, conducted on October 16, has jeopardised the career of an entire batch of 100 medicos who were caught in a heavy traffic snarl-up and could not appear in time at the examination centre.

The 2017-batch of medicos of the state-run Vardhaman Institute of Medical Sciences (VIMS), Pawapuri, have requested the Aryabhatta Knowledge University (AKU) for a re-examination of the pharmacology paper II of the MBBS second professional exams.

“We have received the students’ representation, along with a recommendation from the examination centre superintendent. We will sympathetically consider their case but any decision in this regard has to be taken by the university examination board. We will place the matter before it,” said Rajeev Ranjan, AKU examination controller.

“The superintendent of the examination centre disallowed the medicos to appear for the exam after they arrived 90 minutes late,” he said.

The college administration had arranged four buses for the examinees to travel to the examination centre at the Nalanda College of Engineering, Chandi.

“The students left well in advance at noon, keeping a margin of two-and-a-half hours to reach the examination centre which was located some 40-50 kilometres away. However, our students were stuck in a bad traffic jam as candidates of some political parties were filing their nomination papers for the legislative assembly elections,” said Dr Pawan Kumar Choudhary, principal, VIMS.

The medicos and their sympathisers posted about their ordeal on social media.

Nalanda superintendent of police (SP) Nilesh Kumar, however, had a different take on the incident.

“The allegation is baseless. No political procession is taken out at the time of filing of nomination by candidates. Nomination papers are not filed on national highways but at sub-division offices. Nomination for Nalanda, Islampur and Hilsa constituencies are filed in the opposite direction to Chandi where the medicos had their examination centre,” said Kumar.

Kumar said the students were using the traffic jam as an alibi to cover up their delay in leaving for the examination centre.

“The students have been staying here for quite some time and should know about the congestion given the poor condition of national highway (NH) 31. On top of that, people do not have any traffic sense, which occasionally leads to traffic snarls at different locations. It’s nothing new. Even if all the police personnel are used, it still takes time to clear traffic snarls. Sometimes, such problems do arise,” he added.

“This is no issue at all. However, it doesn’t bother us if, for a handful of acquaintances, you want to make an issue out of it,” Kumar signed off.