In a major development, Dental and Medical Admission Test (DMAT) 2015 for which 18000 candidates had applied and over 9000 appeared on Sunday across 87 centres in eight states, has been cancelled.
The test, which was held online for the first time on the direction of high court, was cancelled after power failure at certain centres in Chandigarh, snapping of net connection and other problems enraged the candidates, leading to ruckus at test centres in Chandigarh, Jabalpur and Indore.
The test will now be held again within three to five days and the announcement in this regard will be made on Monday, said Association of Private Dental and Medical Colleges of Madhya Pradesh (APDMCMP)Dr Anupam Chouksey while speaking to HT.
Dr Chouksey said that Chandigarh was made the centre for DMAT aspirants from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. “Due to power failure at the centre, the enraged candidates created ruckus and beat up the exam invigilator. Similar issues cropped at Jabalpur and Indore centres, where angry students created ruckus. In all around 500 to 700 students couldn’t appear in the test due to these reasons”, he said.
On what was the amount of financial loss due to the cancellation, Dr Chouksey said that each one of the 18000 candidates had paid Rs 1100. “This money amounts to around Rs 2 crore, which we had paid to the agency which conducted the test on Sunday”, he said.
DMAT is held by APDMCMP and Admission and Fee Regulatory Committee (AFRC) for admission to 50% seats of private medical colleges. This year DMAT was scheduled for July 12, but it was postponed following the court order of July 9.
Later on July 24, APDMC urged court to permit it to conduct the DMAT online through a private agency, which was allowed by the court with certain conditions.
Candidates who appeared in DMAT here were disappointed and angry with the way the test was held. They rued that despite the fact that there were so many numerical questions in physics and chemistry paper, they were not given pen and paper for the calculations, because of which they couldn’t correctly answer the questions.
Many candidates also complained that the net connection of their computer snapped due to which they lost time and the pattern of the questions changed when they again appeared for the test after half an hour to one hour. Candidates also complained that there was a question for which there was no option and they had to leave it.
In Bhopal there were five centres. After the test was over HT spoke to many candidates outside the centres about what problems they faced during the test.
Pranjal Sahu, who had come from Betul district, said her computer server was down for nearly 42 minutes and she faced lot of problems due to it.
“Nearly 15 minutes after I started answering the questions, the server was down and I had to wait for 42 minutes. After that when I started answering the questions, their pattern had changed. The questions which I had answered, were not there”.
Justin Jacob from Bhopal’s Indrapuri said that the net connection of his computer snapped for sometime due to which he had to again start answering a different set of the questions. “It created great confusion and panic among the students. Net connection went down in case of many students and the organizers had no answer for it”, he said.
All the candidates and their parents with whom HT spoke complained about the lack of pen and paper for solving the numerical in physics and chemistry papers. Ishan Khan, who had come from Chhatarpur to appear in the DMAT at Bhopal said he couldn’t solve many numericals as he couldn’t make the calculations.
“You cannot make such long calculations in your head. You need paper and pencil”, he said. Ankush Malik who had come from Hyderabad said apart from other issues, the candidates had to wait for two hours without any reason. “We were asked to report between 9 and 10 am. Then they took our thumb impression on their biometric device and asked us to wait. We waited till 12 o’clock when the three hour test started. I don’t understand why we had to wait for such a long time without any reason”, he said.
The candidates also rued that despite the high court directions that the result of the test be declared within 15 minutes, there was no clarity about when and where the result would be declared. “I don’t know when the result would be out. Some say it would be displayed on the website of APDMC. But when we don’t known”, said Shweta Kumari, who had come from Bihar...
