A six-member committee set up to review how examinations of medical students are conducted in the state held its first meeting on the campus of the West Bengal University of Health Sciences on Tuesday.

A committee member said the committee’s mandate included reviewing how examinations at various levels — undergraduate, postgraduate and postdoctoral, among others — are conducted.

The committee will examine the present system of how question papers are prepared, how answer scripts are distributed and collected back from examiners and fix gaps found in the system.

No timeframe has been set yet for the entire exercise.

Final-year postgraduate examinations — MD and MS — are scheduled for December.

Final-year undergraduate examinations — MBBS — are scheduled to be held in March while examinations of junior MBBS students will start in phases from January, said a junior doctor.

The six members of the committee are Debasis Basu, pro-vice-chancellor of the West Bengal University of Health Sciences; Monimoy Bandyopadhyay, director of Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (IPGMER), SSKM Hospital; Indranil Biswas, principal of Medical College Kolkata; Santanu Tripathi, principal of Jagannath Gupta Institute of Medical Sciences and Hospital, Budge Budge; Arunima Chaudhuri, professor at Burdwan Medical College and Hospital and Yogiraj Ray, associate professor at IPGMER, SSKM Hospital.

“We will look into how question papers are prepared, how answer scripts are distributed among examiners, and the process being followed in taking back the scripts. We will try to plug gaps in the system. We will look into undergraduate, postgraduate, postdoctoral and other examinations in which medical students appear,” said a committee member.

“Our objective is to strengthen the examination system so good doctors emerge through the process. We will look into all aspects,” said another member.

The West Bengal University of Health Sciences, which is responsible for conducting the examinations across all medical colleges in the state, set up the committee.

The protesting junior doctors, who were on a cease-work and later a fast, have raised allegations of severe irregularities in the way examinations are conducted at present.

“Students who are members of the ruling party’s student outfit get a lot of undue advantage. Besides, there are allegations that question papers were leaked to them,” said Soumyadip Roy, a protesting junior doctor.

“At RG Kar Medical College and Hospital students who raised questions about the way Sandip Ghosh (the former principal) was running the college were given so low marks that they failed the examinations. The present system allows selectively targeting some students,” he added.

The junior doctors had also alleged cheating at the examination hall by a select few students in the colleges some of which, they claimed, were recorded on CCTV cameras, too.

Roy said merely forming a committee would not help.

The committee must recommend and see that measures were implemented to make the examination process fair and transparent.