HYDERABAD: With the tussle between Sanskrit junior college lecturers and the State government over making Telugu compulsory in intermediate education continuing, the announcement of intermediate exam results are likely to get delayed this year. Sanskrit exam answer sheets of lakhs of intermediate students remain un-evaluated as Sanskrit junior college lecturers are on a strike. They have also decided not to evaluate answer sheets. Although the correction of the answer sheets should have started by March 7, even one week later the evaluation has not begun. As Sanskrit is a scoring subject, many students opt for it over Telugu.
Niranjan Reddy of the Telangana Private Junior Colleges Language Lecturers Association said, “If Telugu is made compulsory in intermediate education, then over 2,000 Sanskrit lecturers will lose their jobs and so will teachers teaching Arabic, Urdu, French, Persian and Hindi. In others states like AP, Kerala or Karnataka, regional language is mandatory only till Class X and not in the intermediate.”
When contacted, MJ Susheel Kumar, Controller of Examination, Board of Intermediate Education said, “Some of the protesting Sanskrit lecturers met the Education minister.” However, the meeting with Education minister Kadiam Srihari on Wednesday failed to yield any result. Reddy said, “No assurance was given by the minister on the issue so we have decided to continue the strike and boycott evaluation of the answer sheets.”