PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court on Thursday raised question about a private firm holding the Medical and Dental College Admission Test (MDCAT) across the country lately and asked the additional attorney general if the firm had the capacity to carry out the exercise on such a large scale.

It also declared that it would decide the petitions against the MDCAT in the shortest possible time as the future of hundreds of students depended on the verdict.

Hearing into the petitions filed by students was later adjourned until Oct 20 by a bench consisting of Justice Roohul Amin Khan and Justice Ijaz Anwar. The court appointed lawyers Jehanzeb Mehsud and Amirullah Chamkani amici curiae to help it on the matter.

Several petitions were filed by students against the setting up of the Pakistan Medical Commission and the holding of the countrywide MDCAT by it through the Testing and Evaluation Platform Services (TEPS) from Aug 30 to Sept 30.

Declares it will decide petitions at earliest

The petitioners, who sat the MDCAT, requested the court to declare the PMC’s establishment unconstitutional and against the spirit of the provincial autonomy provided in the Constitution.

They also requested the court to declare the recent MDCAT illegal.

Several lawyers appeared for the petitioners, including Abbas Khan Sangeen, Ali Gohar Durrani, Alamzeb Khan, Fawad Afzal, Shabina Noor and others.

Additional attorney general Aamir Javed represented the federal government.

Barrister Ibrahim Afridi, who appeared for the TEPS, said it was the domain of the PMC to hold the MDCAT and that his client had only provided its services to the PMC for organising the test.

The bench observed that the MDCAT was not conducted on a single day and instead, tests were conducted throughout the month.

Justice Roohul Amin wondered who introduced the system of assigning the tests to a private contractor and if a private firm had the capability to conduct test on such a large scale.

AAG Aamir Javed said it didn’t happen for the first time and even in past, such tests were conducted by private firms.

The bench observed whether it was necessary to repeat a mistake committed in the past.

Justice Ijaz Anwar observed that different question papers were given to students as the MDCAT was conducted on different dates and in some cases, the papers were easy, whereas in others, it was difficult.

Advocate Abbas Khan contended that the testing agency had earned the billions of rupees through such a faulty test.

He claimed that the agency had been asking students for Rs5,000 more if they wanted to review their papers.

Advocate Ali Gohar Durrani said under Section 18 of the PMC Act, the National Medical Authority should conduct annually a single admission test on a date approved by the Medical and Dental Council and in line with the standard approved by the National Medical and Dental Academic Board.

He contended that instead of a single paper, the candidates had been appearing in tests on different dates having different papers.

The lawyer said the paper could be simple for one group of candidates and difficult for others.

The petitioners’ lawyers said the PMC was established through the PMC Act, 2020, for introducing a uniform standard of basic medical education training.

They added that after the passage of the Constitution (Eighteenth Amendment) Act, 2010, health and education had been devolved to the provinces and it was the duty of the provinces to regulate and control those subjects.

The counsel questioned if education was a provincial subject, why the entry test for admission to medical colleges had been centralised.

Published in Dawn, October 15th, 2021