THIS is in response to my letter ‘SMU admission: a candidate’s woes’ (Oct 30). The problem highlighted in my previous letter remains unsolved. I had discussed about the unjust deductions made to my result by the Sindh Medical University (SMU) which lowered down my merit number from 461 in Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS) to 546 in SMU’s initial result.

When confronted with facts, the members the of SMU staff reacted arrogantly and bragged about their ‘rightness’ and enumerated the faults of the Dow University of Health Sciences. Nevertheless, there was a ray of hope that gave me the strength to wait until their final result came.

The final result was announced after the deadline was over, about two weeks later and it came out as an even bigger disappointment. There were no signs of any rectification of the aggregate percentages or the merit numbers. Instead, they dropped it further from 546 to 556.

The Sindh Medical University heads had agreed upon publishing a transparent result where the list of all deserving candidates will be seen available at one time.

However, once again they contradicted their words, and the results were kept hidden from the public because of which one has no idea of who comes before and after him/her and whether he/she even deserves to be there or not.

As many people now know, the SMU has accepted a greater number of students from Sindh’s interior on the basis of ‘sources’ (sifarish) of which there was no description in the prospectus.

Once the news became public, the Sindh Medical University published in newspaper about the increase in seats for Sindh interior students and decrease in the seats for Karachi candidates. The university policies were changed in a matter of days just before admissions.

How unfair and unjust it is. Surely, there are political parties backing up the Sindh Medical University for these acts. Anything is possible in our country as long as one has money and ‘sources’.

Maybe this was my fate. But I strongly urge the people to take action regarding this so that future candidates could be saved from similar losses.

ZARA L. MIRZA Karachi