Negative mark exemption for in-service candidate

KOCHI: The Kerala High Court on Wednesday quashed the state government’s decision to  exempt in-service candidates from negative marks in the medical PG entrance examination.
The court directed the state to proceed with the preparation of rank list based on the evaluation criterion stipulated in the prospectus.With this order the government has to prepare a new rank list.
 A Division Bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Manjula Chellur and Justice V Chitambaresh passed the order while considering a batch of petitions challenging the government’s order.
 The court had earlier restrained the Directorate of Medical Education (DME) from admitting students to postgraduate medical courses till the petition is disposed of. But it allowed the DME to conduct counselling for the course.
 “The withdrawal of negative mark to one group of candidates is nothing but discrimination against another group of candidates,” the Bench held. The Bench pointed out that the state’s decision was arbitrary and against Article 14 of the Constitution and there was hostile discrimination between the group of similarly qualified candidates. The Supreme Court had earlier said that the lowering of qualifying marks without any disparity was permissible if it was sanctioned by an expert body like the Medical Council of India (MCI).
 “In the absence of a uniform criterion to ascertain the merit of the candidate, the state’s decision was against Article 14,” the court said. The court accepted the petitioners’ submission that the prospectus for admission to the PG medical courses did not mention that the in-service doctors would be exempted from the negative marks. The exemption was announced at the venue of the examination, the petitioners said. An order was later issued by the Commissioner for Entrance Examinations saying that negative marks for incorrect responses in the answer sheets would not be applicable to in-service candidates.
No proper approval was obtained from the Medical Council of India before implementing such a norm. In the examination hall there was no bifurcation of seats between service quota candidates and non-service candidates.
Besides, the regulation of the MCI did not provide for exempting the in-service candidates from negative marks, the petitioners said.
 However, the state submitted that the decision to do away with negative mark in the case of in-service candidates was done in lieu of their service under the government, including rural service.