Chandigarh, July 18
The Punjab and Haryana High Court today restrained Baba Farid University, Faridkot, from holding counselling of PMET-2005 candidates till final disposal of the writ challenging the result of the examination conducted by Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar.
Counselling of the candidates had been scheduled for July 20 to 24.
During hearing of the petition filed by Saumil Garg and 36 other candidates, seeking quashing of the result of the re-examination conducted by the university on June 30, the Bench also directed counsel for the petitioners to file an affidavit by tomorrow on the discrepancies in the question paper pointed out by the petitioners.
The Bench also directed counsel to submit the affidavits to counsel for the university, who will file reply to these discrepancies by July 21. The petitioners have also sought an inquiry into the conduct of the examination.
Today, counsel for the petitioners stated that answers to as many as 12 questions had incorrect code keys and since each question was worth four marks, the students could have lost a maximum of 48 marks for no fault of theirs.
He stated that the NCERT book gave different answers than what the university evaluated as correct.
Noting that the future of the students was precious, the Bench said that it did not want them to get into academics with a feeling that an injustice had been done to them.
The Amritsar university had conducted the second examination on June 30 after the result of the first test conducted by Baba Farid University was cancelled by the Punjab Government as the question paper was found to have been leaked. The inquiry being conducted by the Vigilance Bureau is still on.
In their petition, Saumil and others have claimed that there were serious irregularities in the second examination as well.
The result of the second PMET examination was declared on July 2, with the university also declaring that candidates who wished to see their answer-sheets could do so by depositing Rs 2,000. Also, candidates could see other candidate’s answer-sheets by depositing Rs 5,000.
The petitioners have stated that they checked the answer-sheets and found many discrepancies and mistakes. Some such discrepancies/mistakes mentioned in the petition are wrong answer code key for 20 questions; failure of the university to provide correct answers for six questions and some question papers having 201 questions instead of 200.
Another glaring discrepancy in the second list, the petitioners have stated, is that many candidates who were nowhere in the top 500 ranks in the first list are now among the top 100 in the second list. In support of their contention, the petitioners have stated that the candidate who was ranked 1850 in the first list had secured the first rank in the fresh list. This candidate, the petition says, got only 52 per cent marks in his 10+2 examination. Similarly, the second and third-ranked candidates were placed at 4388 and 1776 ranks in the first list.
Claiming that when they and their parents brought the discrepancies to the notice of the university officials, they were threatened and even manhandled. Hearing will now resume on July 22.
