Medical Students Urge Telangana Governor to Postpone PG Medical Exams

In an interaction with the Governor of Telangana, Dr Tamilisai Soundararajan, on 15 June, medical experts raised the question of the postgraduate medical examinations of the state. They urged that the medical examinations be postponed.

A statement from the Raj Bhavan enumerated a number of suggestions to fight the pandemic. One of them was to postpone the postgraduate medical examinations.

Two days before the interaction, a medico who had tested positive for coronavirus had written to the Telangana Governor urging her to intervene in the matter of the Telangana postgraduate medical examinations which are due to be held from 20 to 29 June.

The illness is posing difficulties in the medico’s studies, who said, “I fear that I may not perform well in the exams and risk losing an academic year because of an unfortunate incident. It is simply not possible to face everything simultaneously: the health problem, studies, the exam anxiety, and the social stigma.”

1,405 students from Telangana will take the final examination. Out of them, 663 belong from colleges located in hotspots.

The Governor of the state is by profession a doctor herself. She is also the ex-officio Chancellor of the examination-conducting university, Kaloji Narayana Rao University of Health Sciences.

A Public Interest Litigation has been filed on this matter in the Telangana High Court by the Healthcare Reform Doctors’ Association (HRDA) to seek a directive to stay the examination until the pandemic subsides.