PMET MESSED UP: TRAFFIC JAMS, PAPER LEAK CHARGE,DELAY, PROTESTS

Phagwara/Faridkot, It was a harrowing experience for nearly 15,000 students from across the state who had come to appear for the Punjab Pre-Medical Entrance Test-2015 at Lovely Professional University (LPU) here on Sunday morning.
Since candidates from all of Punjab had to converge on the lone centre set up by Baba Farid University of Health Sciences (BFUHS), which is conducting the examination, there were traffic snarls along all roads leading to the LPU campus.
According to the schedule, the exam was to begin at 11 am today. However, it started at 11.45 am.
Hundreds of students coming from the Malwa belt along the GT Road were the worst affected, owing to a damaged bridge a few kilometers short of the campus.
The commuters were being directed to take a service lane along the bridge, which created a bottleneck and the movement of vehicles stopped altogether. Panic-stricken students and their parents then started off on foot, walking for about 45 minutes from the bridge and Chaheru, crossing the railway line to reach the campus.
Dr Ashu from Ludhiana said she had started with her daughter and husband at 6.45 am but could barely reach the examination centre by 10.15 am.
“It took us more than an hour to just cross the Ladowal toll barrier. It was already 9.30 am when we were a few kilometers from the campus. We were held up in a massive traffic jam near the bridge. We saw candidates and their parents setting off on foot from there. We too decided to do the same and managed to reach the campus in the nick of time. I could not even offer water to my panic-stricken daughter. She was fatigued even before sitting for her three-hour examination. I do not know whether she would be in the right frame of mind for the examination,” she said.
Another parent, Dr Sanjay Sharma from Patiala, said: “Since it was just me and my son going and vehicles were not moving at all, like many other parents we had to stop our car near a club and rush towards the university campus to make it in time. We walked for 20 minutes. Thankfully, a bus provided by LPU helped us reach the examination block at the other side of the campus quickly. I left my son at the examination centre and returned to take my car and reached the campus again. It was absolute disaster on the part of BFUHS in following a one-centre plan.”
University authorities claimed that the 45-minute delay in the start of the exam was due to the late arrival of candidates at the exam centre due to traffic jams. Deputy Registrar Sat Pal Singh confirmed the delay in the start of the exam.
Meanwhile, parents of students blocked the Phagwara-Jalandhar Highway, alleging that the question paper of PMET had been leaked. They also alleged that there was total mismanagement by the authorities in conducting the exam, and also there was no proper arrangement for sitting and that of drinking water on the campus. Parents were also seen looking for shelter from the blistering sun. The highway remained jammed for two hours from 12.30 pm to 2.30 pm. The blockade was lifted only after the intervention of police, just 15 minutes before the exam ended.
The university authorities, however, denied the paper was leaked. Vice-Chancellor Dr Raj Bahadur termed the paper leakage allegations as unfounded. He claimed that after some parents raised such doubts, he personally took two parents to the examination hall to make them see the students writing the exam.