Telengana—Discrepancy in the board examination results leads to student suicides

Vinod Kakumanu
June 29, 2019, 10:24 a.m.

Events took a tragic turn when 19 students from Telangana State committed suicide after apparently getting morbidly disappointed by the examination results. The extreme step was taken by the students within a week of the announcement of the results. It was later reported that the announcement of the results was erroneous and the devastating turn of events is being investigated. It is surmised that the error in the software has resulted in the discrepancies in the examination results that were announced incorrect to such tragic effect.

Telangana Board of Intermediate Education (TBIE) came out with the results of class X and XII on April 18. Within a week of the announcement of the results 19 students were reported to have embraced death after getting marks way less than their performance merited. It has come to light that errors were committed in the evaluation of the answer sheets which has allegedly led to thousands of students undeservedly failing the exams.

The contract of conducting the entire examination right from registration to evaluation was given by the state to Globerana Technologies for the year 2108-19.

Questions were raised about the evaluation of the answer sheets since the announcement of the results. Evaluators have acknowledged that there were apparent irregularities in the marking procedure. Some of the answers were improperly marked and some answers were awarded a zero.

In certain cases, the OMR answer sheet that was a section of the whole answer copy was torn asunder for scanning and in a case where the score should have been 79, a 29 has been awarded. The investigators expressed that the mistakes committed were totally unfathomable and uncalled for.

Globerna Technologies has since then admitted that there were issues with its technological apparatus but added that all of them were found and remedied in time. However, it seems that the entire procedure was rife with errors. The errors are even irreversible in many cases.

It is to be noted that in the year 2018-19 a total of 9.74 lacs class X and XII students wrote the exams, out of which 3.28 lacs have failed.