The PIL has been filed on the basis of a report in The Indian Express (June 14, 1998), which questioned the circumstances under which Dr S H Gudwe, a medical officer and the lone candidate for the exam, had been declared as passed. The notices are returnable in four weeks.

Among other things, the petitioner, Pandurang Shipatrao Pawar (29), a social worker, has demanded a judicial inquiry into the entire episode and has urged the court to restrain Dr Gudwe from registering his qualification with the MCI and the Maharashtra Medical Council.

The petitioner hasalso urged the court to quash the marks awarded to Dr Gudwe and the removal of Dr R C Thorat from government service for allegedly inflating the candidate's marks. He has also urged the court to direct the MCI to cancel Dr Thorat's registration and ask the university to withdraw any work concerned with medical examinations assigned to Dr Thorat. Thorat, chairperson of the Board of Examiners constituted to assess Dr Gudwe's performance, wrote to Vice-Chancellor Dr Shivraj Nakade on May 16, claiming he had been pressurised by some of the examiners on the board to endorse the marks they had assigned to Dr Gudwe. However, The Indian Express discovered that Dr Thorat had actually failed to convince the other examiners to clear Dr Gudwe at the examination.

As a rule, answersheets are usually handed over to the section concerned by the board's chairperson on either the day of the exam or the following day. However, aware that the candidate had failed, Dr Thorat instead wrote to the vice-chancellor claiminghe had been pressurised to endorse the resultsheet. He also demanded an inquiry into the episode. It was on this pretext that Dr Thorat withheld Dr Gudwe's results for a month following the exam.

Meanwhile, Dr Gudwe too approached the vice-chancellor on May 28, and along with a group of students from the medical college, confronted him. He had expressed the fear that his results may not be in his favour and demanded an investigation by the Criminal Investigation Department.

Though Dr Nakade confirmed that both Dr Thorat and Dr Gudwe had met him in connection with the examination and that he had also received a memorandum, Dr Thorat denied doing any such thing. Dr Nakade had also said that Dr Thorat had resolved the matter with the other examiners. However, one of the examiners, who is also a senior professor, told The Indian Express that he would be surprised if Dr Gudwe was declared as passed at the examination. When Dr Thorat finally did submit the result-sheet to the university on June 11, DrGudwe had indeed cleared the examination.