Thanks to the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), nearly 1,000 medical students from Mumbai and Maharashtra were forced to travel to Delhi in order to take the All India Medical Post Graduate Entrance Test, to be held on Sunday. Wary of another attack by MNS activists, several schools and colleges refused to allow the test to be held in their premises, thereby creating dearth of examination centres in the city.
“We didn’t want to inconvenience medical students, but we also wanted to avoid violence. Apart from that, our school is conducting fire drills on Sunday, which made it impossible to accommodate the exams,” said a principal from a suburban school in Mumbai.
Conducted by the All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) across the country every year, the competitive examination will decide admission to 50 per cent of the seats in India for the Post Graduate Medical degree and diploma courses. “We came to know that we had been allotted centres in Delhi only two weeks back. All of us had to make last minute reservations in trains or flights to sit for the exam,” said Gunjan Sharma, a medical student from Mumbai.
AIIMS, in an effort to resolve the crisis, had even contacted the Maharashtra government. “They was busy settling down after the cabinet reshuffle and had no time to address the problem. Even the Gujarat government refused to allot centres for Mumbai students,” said Dr I S Gilada, secretary, People’s Health Organisation (PHO).
Apart from the inconvenience caused to them, students also had to shell out more than Rs10,000 towards travel expense. “Since I could not get a train ticket at the last minute, I had to take a flight. Even accommodation is a problem for me as I have no relatives staying there,” said Rajdeep Jhalani, another candidate.
“It’s ironic that at a time when school and colleges in Delhi have declared a holiday due to extreme temperatures, students had to travel all the way from Mumbai, which is enjoying relatively warm weather,” said Gilada.
