President Ram Nath Kovind sought a factual report on Tuesday from Chief Secretary S K Joshi regarding the 27 students who took their own lives after the Intermediate examination results were released in May in Telangana. Most students allegedly took their own lives after failing to clear the exams.
9 lakh students had appeared for the exams, but as many as three lakh students did not clear the exams.
There were various discrepancies in the marksheets issued, including marking students as ‘absent’ or ‘fail’ even though they had cleared the exams and the printing of wrong subject name on the student’s marksheet.
The President sought the report after Telangana BJP president K Laxman gave a representation on July 1 alleging foul play by the government, and sought justice for the students.
In May, many students said that they had received fewer marks and claimed that the Board of Intermediate could have made a blunder. It was then speculated that Globarena Technologies, the firm which evaluated the test papers, could have committed the error.
Initially, Board of Intermediate Education secretary A Ashok admitted that there were errors in evaluation due to wrong 'bubbling' by evaluators. The teachers responsible were then suspended.
After outrage from parents and opposition parties, the government formed a three-member committee to probe the irregularities. Though the panel gave a clean chit in its preliminary report, the committee, in its full report, pointed out that the errors in the software could have led to discrepancies in the Intermediate exams.
However, the Telangana High Court recently gave a clean chit to the Board of Intermediate Education. The court dismissed the petition filed by NGO Balala Hakkula Sangham and said that the percentage of error was a minuscule 0.16% which is negligible, it said.
Read: Telangana Inter results: Families of students who died by suicide still await justice