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9 medical colleges slapped notices in ComedK seat scam

TIMES VIEW

BENGALURU: The ComedK seat-blocking scam may be on the wane, with the Central Crime Branch (CCB) sleuths cracking down on the racketeers. The numbers show this. There has been an 80% drop in the number of surrendered MBBS seats in private medical colleges this year.In 2013, 230 medical seats were surrendered at 14 medical colleges across the state. This year, only 44 seats were surrendered.The scam thrived with the operators commissioning candidates to write the Undergraduate Entrance Test (UGET), getting the successful ones to block the seats and later surrendering the same. The surrendered seats automatically got shifted to the management quota and would be sold for high sums of money ranging between Rs 50 lakh and Rs 5 crore.Last year, the lid was blown off the scam when a CCB team arrested 45 suspected imposters, including 35 proxy candidates and nine middlemen from the airport and railway stations in the city. The suspected imposters had been brought from Bihar , UP and Rajasthan among other states to the city to write the exam.Joint commissioner of police (crime) Hemanth Nimbalkar said he formed a 10-member special team to investigate the matter. “We questioned over 50 persons, including professors, officials from college managements and also doctors from other states who had been approached by agents. All the efforts ensured a sharp drop in the number of seats surrendered this year. All the 44 surrendered seats are genuine instances of students giving up pursuing MBBS for various reasons.”Though investigators are believed to have reached higher rungs of private college managements during their probe, they are tightlipped.Abhishek Goyal , DCP-CCB, only said the chargesheet will have some shockers.That the ComedK racket was essentially a money-spinner for private college managements was an open secret. But attempts to bell the cat had never happened. While a chargesheet is yet to be filed, at least some concerted effort has been made to clamp down the scam. The skewed system had shut out deserving students from pursuing a medical degree while non-meritorious students would get a seat for a sum.The government should correct more anomalies associated with medical entrance so that only skilled professionals are produced.