Intermediate result bungling: suicides and protests continue to rock Telangana

Hyderabad: Even as Telangana students’ stir against the bungling in Intermediate examination results continues unabated, two more youngsters have committed suicide, taking the toll to 19.

The wave of suicides by the failed students had started last Thursday when about 300,000 students had failed in first and second year Intermediate Examinations.

In the latest incident, a 18-year-old student, Raju hanged himself in Medak district in the wee hours of Wednesday. The student, who had failed in two subjects, hanged himself from a tree in the courtyard of his school in Madur village under Chinnashankarampet mandal of Medak district.

In another incident, a 17 year old girl, S Jyothi, set herself ablaze in Shahbad town of Mahbubnagar district for the same reason. She had failed in civics paper of second year. Earlier on Tuesday, another student Banoth Naveen, committed suicide by jumping under a train at Nekkonda in Warangal district.

Students and parents have alleged that the bungling by the scrutinisers in evaluation of their answer sheets has resulted in a large number of them failing despite good performance.

With each passing day, the protests by the students and parents were intensifying. A large number of students — both girls and boys — gathered outside the office of the State Board of Intermediate Examination on Wednesday with their tale of woes.

One burqa-clad girl said that her father was handicapped and she was not in a position to pay Rs600 (Dh31.50) per paper towards re-valuation of her papers. “I have passed Arabic with 94 marks and they have given me just 6 marks in chemistry and zero in some other subjects. “These cannot be my marks,” she shouted angrily, showing her marksheet.

Another girl said that as the website of the Board continues to be down, her efforts to apply for re-evaluation were also stuck. “The Board is insensitive to our problem. Government does not care. Where should we go”, she said sobbing uncontrollably.

Meanwhile, three member panel constituted by the government to look into the issue was talking the officials of the private company Globarena Technologies Private Ltd, which was given the responsibility of handling the results. The company officials have denied any responsibility of the bungling and said that the problem lied with the process of evaluation, and not with the technological process of publishing the results.

Meanwhile, a division bench of Telangana High Court has come down heavily on the state government and called the bungling in results as grave as 9/11 and the tsunami.

The bench, headed by the acting chief justice Raghvendra Singh Chauhan, has asked the government to come back on Monday with a report on how it intends to deal with the disaster. The court has asked the board to undertake a re-evaluation of the papers of all the 300,000 students who had failed in first and second year examination. The bench rejected the contention of additional advocate general J Ramachander Rao that re-evaluation will take two months. Acting Chief Justice countered it by asking why it will take such a long time when the Board had in the first place evaluated 9.7 lakh papers in a month’s time. The court said that why the students should apply for re-evaluation when clearly it was the fault of the Board.