HYDERABAD: The Telangana State Board of Intermediate Education (BIE) has found itself in yet another goof-up. As per a memo on its website, a student who committed suicide after being awarded 20 marks in the Telugu paper secured 48 marks after re-verification.
The student, A Anamika, killed herself on May 18, hours after the results were announced. While her sister A Udaya blamed the BIE for the death, the Board insisted Anamika had failed anyway and was awarded 48 marks due to a “clerical error”.
This, however, does absolve the Board of callousness, as the latest memo shows that though the student failed in Telugu, her marks had gone up from 20 to 21. This again triggered a flood of allegations of irregularities in the correction and processing of the Intermediate results and places culpability on the Board for the death of students.
Anamika was among the 23 students who committed suicide after the exam. Soon after a hue and cry erupted over the suicides, the BIE re-verified the papers of the deceased students and found that only three passed, one of whom wrote only three papers. Anamika’s marks, however, didn’t change. “Her paper was sent to BIE’s deputy secretary. The camp officer, a junior lecturer, instead of informing this, entered the marks like 48,” said a junior lecturer.
BIE secretary A Ashok, speaking to Express, refuted any responsibility in Anamika’s suicide and said that even the first round of verification, done for 53 students, showed that one mark was enhanced.“We have clarified that it was a clerical mistake in the spot valuation camp, and the student has scored only 21, and not 48 marks. We have also uploaded her answer script and it clearly shows that the enhanced marks are 20 to 21,” he said, adding that action would be initiated against the person responsible, after a detailed inquiry.
“The allegations by the student’s sister that the Board is responsible for her suicide are baseless and incorrect,” he added. A junior lecturer, meanwhile, pointed to lapses in the system. “This is a major blunder. Without verification, how could the lecturer post the marks? It also makes us wonder how many such cases would have been there, where marks were posted without proper scrutiny,” the junior lecturer said.
After the High Court directed the Board to re-verify the answer scripts of all 9.02 lakh students, the BIE pressed into service 5,831 teachers. It appears a number of them were also contract lecturers. For re-verification, only regular lectures from govt junior colleges are roped in. At each camp, there is one senior and two junior lecturers. The Telangana Intermediate Board (BIE) Board has also been flayed for roping in contract junior lecturers for such sensitive work.