Madhya Pradesh: Counselling delayed after govt website allegedly gets hacked

Bhopal: The students are bearing the loss of technical fault, as the second round of counselling for admissions to state run and private medical colleges in MP was deferred due to the technical fault in the government website. At the moment 730 seats are vacant at private medical colleges and 87 at government ones.

The Supreme Court ordered a centralised admission process in the state on September 22 after cancelling counselling sessions conducted by private medical and dental colleges. Friday was the last day of the counselling.

Speaking with the HT, DME director GS Patel said,“The counselling was stopped late night after the MP Online server was hacked. The reason behind the hacking and the identity of the hacker will be revealed after an investigation."

Angry Students could not decide where to vent their anger. The students and their family members, who came to the Gandhi Medical College (GMC) for the counselling showed their anger by blocking the road.

Neeraj Jain from Gwalior, one of the candidate said, “I am coming here with my daughter for the last four days with the hope of getting a seat in a government medical college. The authorities could not display the results till 1 am, citing a problem in the computer server."

Himanshu, another student from Raisen district, claimed the server error was a well-planned conspiracy. “The Supreme Court ordered the authorities to complete counselling by September 30 midnight. That the results were not displayed was a violation of the SC order".

“We could not leave the premises (of GMC) to take food as we were afraid that we might miss our call for the counselling,” said Umesh Barnwal from Gwalior, who came with his friend and her daughter for the counselling. “We only had snacks from the eateries located near the GMC. Food stall owners fleeced the students and parents. They were charging almost double the MRP printed on food items.”

Barnwal added, “No water in the toilets of the college put people in difficulties.”

While, due to the irregularities, some parents with their children entered the GMC dean’s office around 1.30 am to talk to the Dean over the delay in counselling.

On the other hand, the GMC dean Ulka Srivastavat said, “We sent an official to the MP Online office to obtain the hard copy of the results list as the technical problem in the servers was beyond our control."