New Delhi: The Supreme Court has adjourned the AIIMS paper leak case to Monday and the fate of thousands of successful medical students is hanging in balance.
With this paper leak, cheating has certainly gone hi-tech.
The weapon of choice of the students who masterminded the entire AIIMS paper leak chose not the outdated slips but blue tooth technology, computers and mobile phones to get quick readymade SMS answers.
The bungling was detected when the examiners smelt a rat after seeing that 37 of the top 100 rankers in the All India Post Graduate Medical Entrance Exam were from Chennai.
Seven students have been arrested in Chennai and remanded to judicial custody for leaking the paper.
However, for the hundreds of students who were selected to sit for one of India's most prestigious medical exams, these are anxious days.
It's still not clear whether the exam results are valid or whether there will be a fresh examination. On Friday many of them took their battle to the Supreme Court.
"We would have not given up seats in other colleges," say angry students adding that they would have sat for other exams if they had known this was going to happen."
The anger and frustration is understandable. More than 57,000 students sat for the exam out of which 4500 made the cut off for the 3086 seats.
In 2002 when students were caught cheating at the Lucknow centre, the Health Ministry's position was very different.
Says Advocate MC Dhingra, "That time the Government had opposed the cancellation of the exam. This time it is saying cancel it. This is unimaginable. They are completely unmindful of the careers of thousands of medical students who have had a good exam."
The entrance examination is conducted by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi in January-February every year at 26 different centres all over the country.
The exam is for admission to 25 per cent seats for Postgraduate courses (MD, MS, MDS and PG Diplomas) in all medical and dental colleges run by the Centre and state governments, municipal or other local authorities in India.
The exam holds for all states except the states of Jammu and Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh. The exam also does not hold for AIIMS, PGI Chandigarh and other private medical colleges.
This is not the first time a paper leak has happened at such an examintaion and it is certainly not going to be the last.
The students are hoping that at least this time round, the Health Ministry will weed out the bad apple rather than holding the entire examination process to ransom at a time when they are uncertain as to what the future holds for them.
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