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The future of about three lakh students in Telangana, who have ‘failed’ in the intermediate examinations conducted in March, remains uncertain even as 18 of them have committed suicide so far.
Large-scale discrepancies in the results announced on April 18 by the Board of Intermediate Education (BIE) triggered a furore in the State. Hundreds of students, who failed to get pass marks in some subjects and their parents took to the streets, resulting in detention of several agitators.
Caught off guard, the State Education Ministry, the Board and the government mounted a poor defence. Initially, it tried to dismiss the allegations but had to give in in the face of growing protests, a case in High Court and complaints to the Human Rights Commissions, among other factors.
‘Errors’ in evaluation
Admitting to ‘errors’ in evaluation, compilation of the marksheets and entry of data, the Ministry appointed a three-member panel with experts drawn from the IIT, Hyderabad and BITS, Hyderabad campus, to look into the matter. Opposition parties too exerted pressure.
In the meantime, instances of “errors” mounted: while some got their result as failed even though they had scored higher marks than required, others were declared passed even though they had failed. The escalated agitations and street protests across the State reached the Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao’s office here today.
Responding to a public interest litigation filed on the fiasco, the High Court asked the State government to let it know how many days it would require to re-evaluate the answer sheets in question. According to official data, the total number of students who appeared for the exams was 7.90 lakh.
The Chief Minister, who broke his silence on the sixth day, held a review meeting and directed the officials to offer re-verification of scripts and recounting free of cost to the failed students. He also urged students to show patience and not to resort to extreme steps.
Role of private firm
In the raging issue, the role of a private company too came to the fore. The contract for processing the results, which was being done earlier by the Centre for Good Governance, a government agency, was handed over to a Hyderabad-based private firm, Globarena Technologies, recently. Political parties have flayed the government for awarding the job to a private firm that was not “competent enough” to take up the job.
They also alleged that the firm had links with the top leadership of the Telangana Rastra Samithi.
Globalarena, however, contended that it was capable of handling the task and asserted that it had executed the contract systematically.
“Our job is to handle the process for three years before handing it over to the BIE,” VSN Raju, CEO of Globalarena, said.
He refused to comment on what could have gone wrong, saying “an inquiry is going on.”
Meanwhile, Congress leader Revanth Reddy has written a letter to Governor ESL Narasimhan, requesting him to intervene in the issue and resolve it.
He asked the Governor to talk to the families of the victims to understand the gravity of the problem.
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