Kathmandu, September 6

The Supreme Court today stayed the Institute of Medicine’s MBBS entrance exam scheduled for tomorrow.

A single bench of Justice Tej Bahadur KC issued the order in response to a writ petition filed by Aayush Ojha, Shivani Chaudhary, Neha Das, Hikmat Sunar and Jivan Neupane against the IoM, other medical institutions and the government.

The petitioners have named the Medical Education Commission, Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, IoM, Tribhuvan University, Patan Health Sciences Academy, BPKIHS and Kathmandu School of Medical Sciences as defendants.

The SC stated it was staying the IoM entrance exam planned for September 7 as issues raised by petitioners were related to provisions of the Medical Education Act and needed to be settled after hearing arguments from both the sides. The SC also ordered both the sides to present their arguments on September 11.

In the writ petition filed on Wednesday, the petitioners argued that the said medical institutions had planned to conduct MBBS entrance exams without allocating 75 per cent scholarship seats — a mandatory provision of the newly passed Medical Education Act.

The new act states that the objective of the law was to ensure geographical balance and social justice and institutional accountability.

The petitioners have said that BPKIHS allocated only 30 seats for scholarship out of 100 seats. Even its admission booklet states that it will make available only 33 seats for scholarship.

Kathmandu University has not stated how many seats it will make available for scholarship. Patan Health Science Academy’s admission booklet states that it will make available 15 per cent seats for scholarship.

IoM has also not stated how many scholarships it will provide.

Meanwhile, TU officials held an emergency meeting and decided to postpone MBBS entrance exam scheduled for tomorrow. IoM Dean Jagadish Agrawal said bachelor level entrance exams scheduled between September 7 and 11 were also put off.