Comed-K exam held, students confused

Bengaluru: With the biology paper for which they had strenuously prepared over the last few months, suddenly cancelled following a Supreme Court directive, students who travelled from faraway places and even other states to write the COMED-K exam on Sunday, were a disappointed lot.

Many of them were hoping to be in contention for medical and dental seats along with engineering seats but with the Supreme Court making it clear that private medical colleges cannot hold admission seats, their medical hopes have been dashed.

They will now have to wait for the Supreme Court decision on making National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET) mandatory for medical admissions with the second phase of NEET scheduled from July 24.

As many as 54,300 of 69,102 students who had applied for the COMED-K test, took the physics, chemistry and mathematics (PCM) exam on Sunday.

Swathi, a medical aspirant from Udupi who took the test, said, “I felt bad because I travelled all the way to Bengaluru just to write my COMED-K Biology exam and they cancelled that. I was prepared for the biology paper, not PCM. I got a message last night at 10 pm about the exam being cancelled! I feel like my future is ruined.”

Another medical aspirant from Kerala said: “I was hoping for a medical seat, how can they cancel a subject giving us just a day’s notice? I’m now hoping for a good NEET rank. Everybody is so confused; no one is telling us what is happening.”

Further, students also expressed disappointment over their unsatisfactory performance due to the cancellation of the biology paper.

Besides, technical glitches made things worse at five of the 78 centres in Bengaluru city, students were aggravated by a delayed login for the test. As many as 54,300 out of 69,102, (which works out to 78.6%) students took the Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics entrance test for admission to private engineering colleges on Sunday.

While no malpractices were reported from any of the test centers, delayed logins were seen in a few test centres in the city. According to the COMEDK officials, in five of the 78 centres in Bengaluru city, there were delayed logins for the test by a few students; the built-in mechanism permits that whenever there’s a delayed login, the time gets extended automatically to the extent of delay.

Vani, another Medical aspirant, said, “My exam wasn’t great. Biology is my strongest, and that was cancelled. They have cancelled all other Medical exams, I don’t know what to do. I’m very scared now.  Medicine was my dream.” Sharadi from Viveka College in Udupi who took the test in Bengaluru sounded a more positive note.  “My exam went well and I was well prepared. However I could have done better if the Bio paper was not cancelled.  I want a medical seat. I’ll hopefully get in through NEET.”

Priyanka from Sri Chaitanya college in Bengaluru admitted, “It wasn’t as hard as I had expected it to be. But the sad part is that they cancelled the Biology exam. I was hoping to get into a medical through a COMED K seat, but now I lost my chance. I have to look for a backup and pray for my NEET results to be good.”

Gopika from Kerala, an engineering aspirant, was cheerful.  “My exam was fine. My father seems happier than I am. Math was a little difficult. I aced Physics and Chemistry. There were many theory questions, so we had learnt whatever came. Nothing came as a surprise to us. I want to do Engineering, so the cancellation of the Biology exams did not affect me. I did not plan to write it anyway.”