HYDERABAD:Hundreds of students, who couldn’t get a rank in the IIT-JEE (mains) due to a goof-up by the Telangana Board of Intermediate Education (BIE), heaved a sigh of relief Thursday.
With the State government stepping in, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has agreed to reconsider the students’ Inter marks and announce their IIT-JEE (mains) ranks on Saturday morning. The results of the IIT-JEE (mains) released on Wednesday gave a shock to about 1,188 students from the State — the BIE, by Education Minister Kadiyam Srihari’s own admission, didn’t submit their Inter marks to the CBSE for the latter to compute their IIT-JEE (mains) ranking.
The CBSE gives 40 per cent weightage to Inter marks in IIT-JEE (mains). Now, the 1,188 students can exercise their college and course options on Saturday and Sunday — the last two days of the ongoing web counselling. Officials said the CBSE will announce ‘fractional ranks’ without tweaking the already announced nationwide ranking. In other words, the ranks will be worked out based on the Inter marks submitted by the BIE on Thursday. For instance, if a student secures enough marks to get a rank between 100-101, he would be ranked 100.1 and so on. Addressing a press conference here, Kadiyam Srihari admitted negligence on the part of the BIE officials. “The data pertaining to 62,000 students, who had appeared for JEE (mains), reached the CBSE. But for some inexplicable reason, the data of 1,188 students was not sent to the CBSE,” he explained and added the government would initiate action against erring officials.
As the BIE goof-up came to light, the government on Thursday morning rushed principal secretary (education) Ranjeev Acharya and BIE secretary A Ashok to Delhi to resolve the crisis. The duo held talks with CBSE officials, the Central Seat Allocation Board and the HRD ministry officials till 4:30 pm, Srihari said.
“Our officials will stay put in Delhi till July 7 when the first phase of seat allocation ends. Students can exercise their options without any hitch,” a visibly relieved Srihari assured the students.
Confusion worse confounded
In the wake of State bifurcation and division of the erstwhile BIE between Telangana and AP, about 500 applicants had submitted incorrect details. Some, who had taken BIE (Telangana) exam, had termed it an AP exam and vice-versa in their IIT-JEE form.