New Delhi- Candidates are concerned over the lack of Foreign Medical Examination (FMGE) December 2024 exam centres in some states and union territories.

FMGE is one of the high-stakes exams conducted by NBEMS. FMGE December 2024 is scheduled to be held on 12th January 2024. Interested candidates can register for the exam till November 18, 2024.

Keeping in mind the sensitivity of this exam, to maintain its sanctity, NBEMS has planned to take all possible measures to prevent any unfair practices used by the candidates appearing for this exam.

Speaking on the FMGE December 2024 exam centres, the National Board of Education in Medical Sciences (NBEMS), Additional Director, Dr Vinay Gupta, told Edexlive, “One such measure is to limit the conduct of examination at centres that do not meet the stringent audit parameters related to secure conduct of examination. These parameters are logistics, systems used, software installed, technology partners, and others. Therefore, the examination is not conducted in a few states/UTs due to the unavailability of desired categories of centres”.

"In the recent past, NBEMS has identified incidences of unfair means adopted by desperate candidates who have been failing to qualify for the examination over the years, wherein, they have colluded with the staff of test centres to get an unfair advantage in the examination. NBEMS has registered an FIR against such elements in the past and taken additional precautionary measures to prevent such incidences from happening again. The Agartala Centre in Tripura reported mass cheating by candidates, following which, the centre was omitted from the exam centres list. The random allocation of the test city from among the four different choices being given by the candidate is one such measure. By way of this process, the candidate is unaware of the test city till two weeks prior to the conduct of the examination that shall be allocated to him or her, thereby, preventing any possibility of colluding with the exam functionaries at the test centres." he added.

Earlier, FMGE was conducted through pen and paper mode, which was limited to Delhi city only. Now, after conducting the exam in a computer-based test (CBT) mode NBEMS is going to conduct the forthcoming FMGE in 55 cities across the country. Computer Based Testing (CBT) method for conducting the examination was adopted in June 2014.

As per the information bulletin released by NBEMS for FMGE in December 2024, there are 60 centres. However, 11 states and six union territories (UTs) do not have any centres. States without exam centres are Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Manipur, Nagaland, Odisha, Sikkim, Tripura and Uttarakhand. Union Territories without exam centres are Andaman and Nicobar, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Ladakh, Lakshadweep and Puducherry.