Telangana Board of Intermediate, which is at the centre of a row over goof-up in declaring results of Intermediate examination, suspended a teacher and imposed fine on another for giving a student '0' marks instead of '99' on Sunday.
A day after three-member committee submitted its report to the government, Board of Intermediate Education (BIE) began action against those found guilty of dereliction of duty.
BIE announced late on Sunday that it has imposed Rs 5,000 fine against Uma Devi, a teacher of a private school who evaluated Telugu paper of Navya, a 12th standard student but instead of giving '99' marks gave her '0' marks. Uma Devi has also been sacked by her school management.
BIE also suspended Vijay Kumar, a teacher of a tribal welfare school, who had served as scrutiniser but failed to notice the blunder.
However, the suspension also raises a larger question on whether the two teachers were just being made scapegoats to pacify angry students and parents.
A total of 9.74 lakh students appeared for the Intermediate examinations held in February-March, out of which as many 3.28 lakh failed to secure pass marks.
The goof-up by the Board has triggered a spate of suicide by students and protests by parents, student bodies and opposition parties. They are demanding action against the higher-ups in the Board and the Globarena Technologies, an IT company, which was allegedly found guilty of the massive bungling.
Around 20 students have killed themselves, allegedly dejected with their marks, and massive protests forced the government to announce free re-verification of answer sheets of over 3 lakh students, who were declared failed in the examination.
The process of re-verification is underway at 12 centres across the state. Five of these centres are located in Hyderabad.
While the BIE was re-valuating the papers of the failed students without applications, more than 50,000 students, who cleared the examinations but were not satisfied with the marks obtained, also applied for re-verification.
On Friday, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) issued a notice to the Telangana government, seeking a detailed report on the goof-ups by the Board.
Taking suo motu cognisance of the media reports on student suicides, the Commission sought a detailed report in the matter within four weeks, including action taken against the guilty and relief, if any, provided to the aggrieved families.
IANS inputs