NEET Files changing Admission criteria from Percentage to Percentile not traceable: MCI in RTI response

New Delhi: Crucial files related to the change the admission criteria of MBBS, BDS courses which talked about the change in the criterion from a percentage to a percentile system have gone missing from the Medical Council of India office, The Wire has recently reported.

The decision to change the admission criteria from percentage to percentile had elicited surprise by many and now the documents pertaining to the said decision by the apex Medical Council of India (MCI) are not traceable, the MCI revealed in an RTI filed with it

According to The Wire, an RTI query was filed in December last year asking the apex medical council about the documents related to its decision to modify the admission criterion. Via his petition, the RTI activist asked for copies of "file notings, note sheets and correspondences, from initiation to the finalisation, through which the decision was taken to change the percentage system to percentile system for determining the merit of the candidates for selection into the medical and dental colleges through NEET."

The petitioner also asked if any change was incorporated in the provisions of the Medical Council Act for effecting the change from percentage to the percentile system.

However, the MCI failed to present the copies in its reply and stated that the file pertaining to the said decision is not "traceable".

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In its response, dated December 19, the Medical Council of India said, the "Board of Governors (BoG) in Supersession of Medical Council of India" stated that "since the file regarding the change from percentage to percentile system is not traceable, hence the information/ documents cannot be provided."

The admission criteria via the National Eligibility cum Entrance test; NEET to medical and dental colleges in the country was changed from percentage to percentile. Percentile stands for a number where a certain percentage of scores fall below that specific number. Hence, it relies on the candidates' performance when compared to the performance of others.

For example, if the NEET Cut off is 50^th percentile for particular category candidates, a candidate is required to score more than 50% of candidates belonging to that category.

With the given RTI response, the petitioner moved the Delhi Police Commissioner demanding FIR be registered for "investigating and tracing untraceable government files at the office of the Medical Council of India as it concerns greater national interest," reports The Wire.

The petitioner alleged that he "apprehends that the file concerned has been intentionally misplaced to prevent passing of information to the complainant about various illegality and irregularities being conducted to for determining the merit of candidates for selection into the medical colleges and dental colleges through NEET".

The petitioner further demanded the authorities to identify the custodian of the files and the files to be reconstructed by collecting the documents from concerned departments, added the daily