In an interim order, the Madhya Pradesh High Court on Thursday ordered scanning of the Optical Mark Recognition or OMR answer sheets of candidates of the July 12 DMAT for admissions to private medical colleges at the examination centres itself immediately after the test.
The division bench of Chief Justice A M Khanwilkar and Justice K K Trivedi directed the Association of Private Dental and Medical Colleges to scan the answer sheets of candidates at the Dental and Medical Admission Test (DMAT) at all the nine examination centres in the state.
DMAT will be conducted across the country including at nine centres in the state.
The high court ordered the principal secretary (home), principal secretary (medical education department), the secretary of the Admissions and Fees Regulatory Committee (AFRC) and the president of APDMC to keep a set each of the scanned OMR answer sheets' data.
"Before declaring the results... appropriate authorities (officials) must verify the position on case-to-case basis with reference to the data contained in the soft copy secured on the day of examination," the court said.
The court was hearing a bunch of petitions demanding various measures to make the DMAT rigging-proof, such as scanning of OMR answer sheets at the examination centre itself to guard against tampering during the valuation.
A petition filed by former lawmaker Paras Saklecha has sought a CBI probe into the DMATs held between 2007 and 2014 in the state, alleging large-scale rigging and malpractices.
After the Vyapam scam, which is about rigging of entrance test for government medical colleges and recruitment for government jobs, came to light, DMAT scam followed with the arrest of some people who allegedly took huge bribes to facilitate admissions to private medical colleges.