By IANS
Lucknow : Admitting serious anomalies in the results of the medical entrance examination, the Uttar Pradesh government has decided to declare revised results Thursday.
The government will also announce the report submitted by a specially constituted nine-member technical committee that suggested reassessment of the result.
About 84,000 candidates had taken the Combined Pre-Medical Test (CPMT) to different medical colleges in the state, having nearly 1,600 seats. These also included the aryurvedic and homeopathic institutions.
Even as the investigating team was prima facie convinced that there was no "intentional irregularity" during the process, Chief Minister Mayawati was stated to have made it loud and clear that the guilty would not be spared at any cost.
"On the face of it, it seemed that an erroneous application of the systems had led to anomalies in the result and there was no mischief on the part of the concerned officials yet, the chief minister has given us very clear instructions to ensure that even those guilty of neglect be brought to book," state Cabinet Secretary Shashank Shekhar Singh told a press conference here Wednesday evening.
Besides widespread protests across the state, the discrepancies also led an unsuccessful candidate ending his life by jumping in front of a moving train.
The state administration was, however, not too sure what it would do in case the suicide victim now figured in the list of successful candidates.
"We could only express deep regret; after all, suicide is a cognizable offence and we must not encourage such tendencies," Singh pointed out.
Admitting that the revised result would seriously affect the position of a large number of candidates, he said: "The special probe panel had discovered that about 75 percent of the result was affected due to wrong application of computer software."
He, however, denied any irregularity in the checking of answer sheets. "A random re-scan of 14,000 answer sheets did not reveal any mischief."
According to him, the anomaly could have been nipped in the bud if the organisers of the examination had carried out a mandatory manual check.