Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court called the goof-up in the Intermediate exam marks evaluation a “grave disaster” and directed the officials to inform the court by Monday how many days they would take to re-evaluate the exam papers of all the three lakh students who had failed.
A division bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Raghavendra Singh Chauhan and Justice A.Rajasheker Reddy referred to the 9/11 terror strikes in the US, and a natural disaster like a tsunami. Despite the risk of losing a life, the officials concerned did not take necessary measures, the High Court said.
The bench was dealing a PIL by Mr P. Achyuta Rao, founder president of the NGO Balala Hakkula Sangham, seeking to direct the government and the BIE to conduct an inquiry into the process of uploading and evaluation of marks of students.
His counsel C. Damodhar Reddy said that due to the lapses of the BIE 16 students had taken their lives. He told the court that the BIE had acknowledged that more than 50,000 students had failed due to its errors. Counsel sought a judicial probe by a retired Judge of the High Court.
The bench said that a judicial probe would not bring a solution for the students but would consume time and aggravate the situation.
Additional Advocate General J. Ramchander Rao said it would take two months to re-evaluate the papers of three lakh failed students. They have to approach the BIE and pay the fee, he said.
To this, Justice Chauhan asked why it would take so long when the board had evaluate the papers of 9.7 lakh students in a month. “Why should the students come up with an application for re-evaluation when it’s the mistake of the board,” he asked.
The bench hinted the re-evaluation should not take more than 10 days. BIE secretary Dr A. Ashok said the board had to deploy a number of evaluators to re-evaluate the papers. An evaluator clears approximately 40 answersheets per day.
The AAG said only 9,000 students had applied for reevaluation against more than 22,000 every year.
To this, Justice Chauhan said, “We want a solution for this grave issue, not facts and figures by Monday first hour. It's a grave disaster, hence let the state pool its machinery, work overtime and solve this issue. After all the future of our young students is at stake. It’s the responsibility of the state government to win the confidence of the citizens.” He made it clear that the re-evaluation process should not affect the supplementary exams.
