HYDERABAD: A division bench of Telangana High Court on Thursday directed the Board of Intermediate Education (BIE) to place before it the answer scripts of students, who have committed suicide. Besides, the bench directed the petitioner to file a comprehensive affidavit on issues opposed by him to the Board’s arguments.
The bench was passing this order in the petitions filed separately by Balala Hakkula Sangham president P Achyuta Rao, and Rapolu Bhaskar, advocate of the city, seeking judicial enquiry into the alleged irregularities in Inter results. The petitioners sought court directions for payment of `50 lakh compensation to the deceased students family and to take action against the erring officials for the fiasco.
Advocate C Damodar Reddy, appearing for Balala Hakkula Sangam, urged the court to direct the State government to submit to the court the mark memos and answer scripts after re-verification of the 26 students who ended their lives because of the irregularities of the board. The answer scripts and marks memos of the students cannot be downloaded from website, he pointed out.
After hearing the above submissions, the bench directed the counsel to place his submissions as an affidavit.
Raising objection to the submissions of petitioner’s counsel, special counsel of Telangana A Sanjeev Kumar while placing the counter affidavit before the court, said that the board has followed the court directions on the issue and accordingly published the results of earlier failed candidates, after re-verification and recounting, on May 27 and all answer scripts of 9.02 lakh students, including 3.82 lakh failed candidates, have been uploaded on the board’s official website. Out of 3.82 lakh students, about 1.8 lakh students have already downloaded their answer scripts, he explained.
As for the suicides, the special counsel said that a total of 23 students have committed suicide and another three attempted suicide.
After hearing both sides, the bench directed both the parties to file their additional affidavits in detail and posted the matter to Monday for further hearing. The Intermediate board, in its affidavit, stated that the Inter supplementary examinations would be held from Friday.