Chennai: Over 7,000 doctors from TN are now running from pillar to post after the national board of examination suddenly decided to shift the All India PG Medical Entrance Test (AIPGMEE) from Chennai to other centres across the country.
The examination, scheduled to be held in Chennai between December 2 and 8, was cancelled due to floods in the city. Doctors, who have been preparing for the past one year, are frustrated and disappointed with the sudden shift in the examination venue. As the news was intimated only very recently, candidates have been experiencing great difficulty in booking train or airline tickets.
In some cases, the doctors who had already booked tickets to the new examination centres, were again told by the board that the exam had been shifted to yet another city.
Meanwhile, a state government official told this newspaper that the health department is frantically trying to get this issue sorted out by taking to NBE officials. “They claimed it was difficult for them to get old examination centre. The NBE had picked some engineering colleges as centre for the online examination. But those colleges, which had their own problem after floods, are now not ready to lend their space out for exams” said the official.
“We tried to convince the Central government but they said there is a sample and logistical problem. Each centre in Chennai can only allot 1,000 students and not beyond that. So they decided to conduct the examination elsewhere,” he said. Due to the festive season, airfare charges have shot to more than Rs 12,000 one way to many destinations. Most candidates can’t afford these rates. Examination centres for Chennai candidates have been allotted to Pune, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Trivandrum, Jaipur, Delhi. According to a doctor whose exam centre is now Trivandrum, the candidates made efforts to request the AIPGMEE to conduct the test in the state but were unable to reach them.
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