Seventeen-year-old Vinod and 30 other students from Bengaluru did not write the Secondary School Leaving Certificate (SSLC) exam, which was scheduled to start on March 30.
The reason for this is that the school they were enrolled in did not manage to get admit cards for them for the exam.
Yashoda Bopanna, Director of the Karnataka Secondary Education and Examination Board, who could not be reached by The News Minute has reportedly said that the students would have to write a "Freshers exam" in June 2016.
Vinod, who is a student of St. George school in Saraipalya area in the city, told TNM that he feels cheated by the principal of Swami Vivekananda school, with which his school had a tie-up.
"I feel disappointed. Until 8 am in the morning, Nagaraj the owner of Swami Vivekananda school promised to get the admit card for the 31 students. We were behind him for the last ten days."
Shakuntala, co-ordinator of St. George school said, "Since St. George school had only 13 students studying class 10, they were given a transfer certificate and enrolled in Swami Vivekananda school, which has 18 students studying in class 10."
"I joined last year and the owners who run the school gave asked me to be the co-ordinator. Until 2015, the school had a tagging programme with Little Glady's school. The tagging programme is not legal. In the tagging programme, the students are not given a transfer certificate but write the exam as students of St. George. To avoid any problem, last year, I proposed to have a tie-up instead," she said.
TNM could not get in touch with Nagaraj, owner of Swami Vivekananda school, who is now in custody at Hennur police station.
A police source, who didn't want to be named, said that Nagaraj is being interrogated.
"So far he has said that a person who promised to get the admit cards for the students did not manage to get it before the exam could start," said the source.
Vinod, whose mother works as a helper at a Montessori and father is a carpenter, wants to pursue a career in law and hopes the decision to write the exam in June does not affect his admission to pre-university college.
"Many students fear that the board's decision to conduct an exam exclusively for us in June 2016, would affect admissions. They have openly said that if they decide to take extreme steps like suicide, it would be because of the fault on the part of the owner of Swami Vivekananda school," he said.
Vinod's brother, whose name is also Nagaraj told TNM that it was all smooth when the school had a tagging programme with Little Glady's school.
"I passed out of St. George school two years ago. Even last year, there was no problem. This new tie-up with Swami Vivekananda school, which was done in 2015 has created all the problems," alleged Nagaraj.