HC wants doctors to display academic performance report

“Some doctors have become commercial brokers having nexus with pharmacists,” the Madras High Court said on Thursday before going on to state that the Medical Council of India “will have to take a decision and ensure that the number of attempts made by the doctors (to pass their medical exams) will have to be displayed on its website and also at the hospitals/clinics” so that the patients know the academic performance of doctors.

Justice S. Vaidyanathan made the observations while dismissing a writ petition filed by a medical student who continued to fail in the examinations despite several attempts and had approached the court to get pass marks in one of the subjects by taking into consideration his Improved Internal Assessment marks. The judge said that the petitioner’s doctor father should have asked his son to study well instead of sending representations and filing cases in the court for “grace marks.”

The judge pointed out that the petitioner had completed Plus II in 2010 by securing 946 out of 1,200 marks and joined the MBBS course at the Pondicherry Institute of Medical Sciences. He completed his first year in May 2013 and wrote the second year exams in November 2014, which he could clear only in November 2016. In the third year exams, the petitioner had to clear three subjects — comunity medicine, ENT and ophthalmology.

In May 2016, he failed in all the three subjects and in November 2017, he was able to clear the ophthalmology paper alone. He approached the court claiming that he would have cleared the community medicine paper too if the institute had added the improved internal assessment marks, scored by him in the supplementary exam conducted in November 2017, instead of adding the regular internal assessment marks in May 2017 to his overall marks in the subject.

However, A.V. Bharathi, counsel for the Controller of Examinations of Pondicherry University, told the court that requests to add improved internal assessment marks could be considered only on one occasion for each student and such a request could not be entertained habitually. Concurring with the submission, the judge held such a request could be entertained only from first time seekers and that no student could claim such a concession on multiple occasions as a matter of right.