HYDERABAD: Rapping the knuckles of the Telangana Board of Intermediate Education, the Telangana High Court on Tuesday insisted on knowing whether the answer scripts of all three lakh students who “failed” the Intermediate exams could be re-evaluated, and if so, how long it would take. The State government-appointed three-member probe committee, meanwhile, began its inquiry into the examination muddle that severely dented the reputation of the board.
The high court, contending that there was no way for students to get justice unless their answer scripts were evaluated afresh, directed the government to file a counter affidavit by Monday on the feasibility of re-evaluating the answer scripts of three lakh students. The division bench passed the order on a petition filed by Balala Hakkula Sangham, an NGO, represented by its president P Achyutha Rao.
The division bench, comprising Acting Chief Justice Raghvendra Singh Chauhan and Justice A Rajasheker Reddy, asserted that “each and every student who failed has a right to know the assessment of his performance,” asked the board officials to burn the midnight oil and do the work in shortest possible time. It even asked: “When judges can work till 3 am, why not the officials?”
Not satisfied with the submissions of Additional Advocate General J Ramachandra Rao that complaints of bungling were common, Acting Chief Justice Raghvendra Singh Chauhan felt that the government seemed to be lacking the will to resolve the issue. “I don’t want facts and figures. I want a solution to the issue relating to the future of the students. Where there is a will, there is a way. Why should the students pay for the errors committed by the board? Let the board come forward and rectify the mistakes it made,” the ACJ observed.
Even as the arguments were going on in the high court, Education Minister G Jagadish Reddy said that the government would not hesitate to take action against anyone, irrespective of one’s stature or station, if found to be guilty in the inquiry by the high-level three-member committee, and that there was no need for students to feel apprehensive about their future. “We will get the report from the committee by Wednesday or Thursday and the government will act on it immediately,” he said.
Meanwhile, the three-member committee, headed by Telangana Technology Services managing director GT Venkateswar Rao, recorded the deposition the VSN Raju, CEO of Globarena Technologies which handled the technical end of the examinations. It has been facing allegations that it was not competent to handle the job, but Raju dismissed these as baseless.