Repatriated students allowed to sit third year MBBS exams

Court says the UHS may withhold results until final decision.

LAHORE:

A Lahore High Court division bench on Monday directed the University of Health Sciences (UHS) to let five private students who had completed the first two years of their bachelors in medicine at foreign universities to sit the third year examinations in Pakistan.

The bench, headed by Justice Ijazul Ahsan, directed the UHS registrar to accept their applications and let them sit the exams starting on Tuesday (today). However, it asked the registrar to withhold their results till a decision was reached in the petition.

The hearing was adjourned till the first week of November. Earlier, petitioners’ counsel Advocate Nasir Qureshi submitted that the students had to discontinue their studies in Libyan and Kyrgyz universities and return to Pakistan on account of the deteriorating law and order situation in those countries.

He said his clients had later resumed studies in Pakistan after they were issued No Objection Certificates (NoCs) by the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC).

“The NOC was issued after they (the petitioners) passed an evaluation exam given by the PMDC,” he said.

Advocate Qureshi said the petitioners completed the third year coursework at private medical colleges in Pakistan.

However, he said, their application to sit the annual examination was rejected by the UHS registrar. The decision, he said, was in violation of their fundamental rights. He requested the court to issue directions for the university to let the petitioners sit the annual exams.

UHS registrar Asad Zaheer pleaded the court that the petitioners’ applications had been rejected “because of the widespread irregularities found in the admissions’ process of private medical colleges.”

Published in The Express Tribune, October 2^nd, 2012.