The caretaker Sindh government has announced its decision to hold the Medical and Dental Colleges Admission Test afresh in the province after reports of cheating and astounding results of the exam, which is necessary for admission to medical universities.

MDCAT would be taken again, the spokesperson of the interim Sindh government said in a statement on Tuesday. In this regard, the provincial government has issued directives to the Dow University of Health Sciences.

The development comes a day after the Peshawar High Court ordered the authorities to hold the MDCAT again in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa within six weeks as it upheld the provincial cabinet to re-conduct the exam.

The written order from a divisional bench comprising Justice Abdul Shakoor and Justice Arshad Ali disposed of all the writ petitions.

The Sindh government has ordered the Federal Investigation Agency to conduct an inquiry into cheating complaints in the exam as it cancelled the results of the MDCAT that were taken on September 10 at national and international venues.

“The date of conducting the test again will be announced soon,” said the spokesperson.

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Successful applicants’ reaction to the announcement is yet to come. When the KP cabinet announced on September 25 its decision to hold the exam again, many students protested outside the Peshawar Press Club and described it as an “injustice” to them.

Around 40,000 male and female candidates took the MDCAT conducted by the Jinnah Sindh Medical University (JSMU) on September 10 for 1,700 open merit seats. The test was held at five examination centres in Karachi, Hyderabad, Nawabshah, and Larkana.

Around 10,000 candidates, including more than 7,000 females and nearly 2,800 males, took the exam at the Karachi University centre while over 5,000 other candidates (around 3,700 females and 1,400 males) appeared in the test at the Dow University’s Ojha campus.

More than 13,000 candidates – around 7,000 female and 6,000 male – took the test at the Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences, Hyderabad, according to the JSMU press release.

Over 3,500 candidates had appeared for the exam in Nawabshah and more than 4,000 in Larkana.