By Our Special Correspondent
SHILLONG: The results of the MBBS entrance exam held on July 22, this year is posted on the North East Indira Gandhi Institute of Health and Medical Sciences (NEIGRIHMS) website. Of the128 who qualified, only one tribal boy from Manipur, S Micheal Kom qualified.
He was placed in the 101st position. No other tribal students from other states of North East, including Meghalaya have managed to secure the qualifying 50% benchmark set up by NEIGRIHMS.
Interestingly, of the 128 candidates who qualified, 68 are from Manipur and 67 of them are Meiteis.
A Manipur based website Who Talking has already put up the names of the top 20 candidates who appeared for the NEIGRIHMS entrance exam. The rest 60 are from Assam and elsewhere.
The website says, “Besides, Brenda Latsaheb, 10 other Manipuri boys and girls also featured in the top 20 position of the NEIGRIHMS MBBS entrance 2012. They are Thingujam Joshila Devi (2nd position), Thokchom Rakesh Singh (4th position), Kongkham Merina (5th position), Nirvana Thangjam (8th position), Mercy Ngairangbam (9th position), Monika Nahakpam (10th position), Sonia Moirangthem (12th position), Moirangthem Sangita (13th position), Dinesh Achom (18th position), Chitra Devi Khumanthem (20th position).
Parents whose children have appeared for the entrance exam are in a fix. One of them asked, “Are our children so incompetent that they cannot crack this medical entrance exam? Or is it because Meghalaya does not have coaching institutes for such exams?”
Another parent speaking to this correspondent said he would proceed with an RTI to find out why his daughter who did quite well in her Class XII (Science) could not score the mandatory 50% marks required by NEIGRIHMS.
In fact many parents have expressed surprise that more than half of those who qualified all come from a particular community and from one State – Manipur. They wonder whose interests the regional medical health institute is serving.
