The Delhi High Court has issued notice on a plea alleging discrepancies in the examinations of Diplomate of National Board (DNB) postgraduation degree courses conducted by the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS). A Bench of Justice Rekha Palli, in the recently passed order, issued the notice on the plea filed through Advocate Puneet Yadav for the petitioner, the Association of Diplomate of National Board Doctors. The Central Government counsel Kirtiman Singh accepted the notice and requested the court to grant four weeks' time to file a counter-affidavit.
The National Board of Examination and Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) are amongst the respondents. "Petitioner's counsel submitted that he does not press the application for interim relief, at this stage, and the application, accordingly, dismissed as withdrawn," the order said. Further, the court listed the petition for April 25.
As per the plea, the DNB Orthopedics exam was conducted in March 2021 and the result was declared on July 30, 2021. It further said on August 10 last year, after the declaration of the results, that one of the candidates, namely Jitender Kumar, applied for the release of photocopies of answer sheets under the provision of the failed candidates.
It was noticed that the Paper IV answer sheet of Dr Jitender was of a different candidate. He was also shocked to see that there were no marking on the answer papers, no sign of evaluation or correction by the examiners and no comments by the examiners, and that it was just a tabulation of marks on a separate sheet, the plea said. "Though he informed this to the respondent, it failed to inform candidates or the public by large, the details of any committee or subcommittee constituted to investigate the decoding error and the immense possibility of any malpractice by any employee of the Respondent or any other agency involved in the evaluation of the answer sheets," the plea read.
The valuation of each of the papers by four different examiners reduces the arbitrariness and the importing of two external examiners makes the system foolproof beyond any internal interference, it added. The valuation procedure followed by the Respondent is contrary to the norms laid down by the MCI, the plea alleged.
