After initial hiccups of rumours about paper leak which were further compounded by the arrest of six persons late Saturday night, the examinations of the Uttarakhand Premedical Test (UPMT) were conducted peacefully in 23 examination centres across the State on Sunday.
The HNB Uttarakhand Medical Education University conducted the examination for 195 seats of MBBS and 100 seats of Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS) in the colleges of Sate.
Vice-Chancellor of the University Udai Singh Rawat told The Pioneer that 96 per cent students out of 12,106 enrolled candidates appeared in the examination on Sunday. He claimed the examination were conducted peacefully and were fair. Rawat said every precaution was taken to maintain secrecy and sanctity of the examination.
The students gave mixed reactions about the question paper. Coming out of MKP Inter College, Shivani Manral claimed that the question paper was easier than expected. She said that the question asked in Biology section were quite easy. Another aspirant Akansha Bahandari informed that the Physics portion of the examination was lengthy and time consuming. She complained that the question paper was not balanced as it stressed on some topics while missing out some important ones.
The Head of department of Biology at Baluni classes here, Anil Patel said that the feedback from the students suggests that 23 questions were asked from Genetics, 20 from human physiology while only one question was asked from evolution and three from biotechnology. He said that most of the students found the physics portion tough to handle. In chemistry inorganic chemistry had 23, physical chemistry 15 and organic chemistry had 12 questions in today’s paper.
Interestingly most of the students and teachers felt that the question paper was not balanced and appeared as if prepared in haste. One of a senior faculty member of a top coaching institute said that it looks like as if the authorities changed the question paper at last minute to remove the chances of any leak. This assumption assumes significance in wake of arrest of six persons by the police, a day before the examination in connection with collecting money from some candidates in lieu of a promise to provide the question paper of the elite examination.