The Telangana State Board of Intermediate Education (TSBIE) has finally finished conducting the intermediate exams for the 2019-2020 academic year. When the nation-wide COVID-19 lockdown was imposed in March, one final exam was postponed indefinitely, which was conducted on Wednesday marking the end of the exams.
TSBIE officials stated that they conducted the examinations with all the safety measures in place to avoid any chance of anyone getting the coronavirus infection.
Physical distancing was maintained by allotting only one student per bench; masks were made mandatory for students and sanitisers were placed at several places in the exam centres. All the invigilators were also made to wear masks, according to a TSBIE official.
On Wednesday, the exams for second year Geography – II and Modern Language – II were conducted for which students got the set C question paper this time.
For these examinations, 837 seats were allotted from all over the state, of which 810 were occupied by students while 27 students were marked as absent.
TSBIE said in an official statement that students who could not attend the exam for any reason, including lack of transport due to the present crisis, would be given a chance to write the exam in the Advance Supplementary Examination, which is tentatively scheduled to be held in the third week of July. The board also noted that these students would be treated as regular students and not as supplementary candidates.
Regarding reopening, the board clarified that intermediate colleges cannot reopen until further orders. Usually every year, all intermediate colleges would reopen from June 1 as per the academic calendar.
Similarly, the state SSC exams are also scheduled to be held from June 8 to July 5, 2020. These exams were earlier postponed twice after an educationist filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Telangana High Court regarding the safety of children.