KARACHI, Dec 7: The fate of some 20 girls students, aspiring for admission to MBBS programmes in the city’s medical colleges, still hanged in the balance as a meeting at the provincial health department on Friday failed to reach an understanding on the students’ placement.

The second session of the meeting was, however, scheduled for Saturday where the principals of the city’s two medical colleges and other officials of the health department would try to resolve the issue, official sources said.

These girl students and their parents, claiming to be the victims of ambiguities and contradictions in the rules, continued to contact the Dawn’s offices in desperation to know the outcome of the meeting.

Most officials who attended the meeting were of the view that the affected candidates deserved a sympathetic consideration, said sources. “We agree it is a human problem and we are trying to address it accordingly,” a senior official said.

According to health department’s officials, these students have fallen prey to their “silly mistake of putting in wrong options on the admission form”.

But the parents contest the contention of the officials, saying that the “mistake” resulted from “ambiguities and contradictions in the rules and clauses” of the prospectus, admission form and other documents required by the health department.

Parents point out that the students are naturally interested in Karachi’s medical colleges. “They mentioned colleges outside Karachi on the second page of the admission form under the impression that they were supposed to mention those colleges that are not in Karachi.”

An agitated student told Dawn that most admission documents, such as forms, admit cards and affidavit, were titled “Admission form for admission in medical institutions in Sindh” and there was a small portion on the next page titled “option” in which some students had erroneously mentioned those medical colleges which were not in Karachi. “It is beyond my understanding why so much importance is being attached to that small column “options” and other documents are being disregarded,” the student said.

An expert on medical college admissions said that considering the admission documents, submitted by students, piecemeal was not correct and health department officials should look into facts in totality. He pointed out that one of the affidavits submitted by the applicants stated clearly that they were applying for admission to medical institution of Sindh/Karachi on merit seats on the basis of domicile/PRC.

The affected students argued that they had clearly mentioned in their affidavit that they were domiciled in Karachi and sought admission to medical colleges of Karachi only.

A couple of highly perturbed students said that it was the fault of health department officials who did not go through the complete documents submitted by the students. “What they are seeing now as a shortcoming or a major fault on the part of the students could have been eliminated earlier, provided they had taken the trouble to inquire from all such students who failed to mention their main institutions, ie the Dow Medical College and the Sindh Medical College, in the “option” column in order to save their academic career, they added.