HYDERABAD: Over 25 students committed suicide in the last 10 days in Telangana, after the state board fiasco causing a massive wave of outrage. Results for the intermediate exam wrongly declared 33 per cent students as failed on April 18. Approximately 3.28 lakh students were declared failed out of the 9.7 lakh students who appeared for the exams. A series of extreme mistakes were made, in which a student was marked 00 in Telugu paper, which turned out to be 99 following a recount. Globarena Technologies Pvt Ltd, which was given the contract for technical support by the state government, is currently bearing the brunt. It allegedly did not have any experience in handling such a large scale exam, clearly not fulfilling the tender criterion.
Opposition parties have accused the ruling KCR-led Telangana Rashtra Samithi, for inaction in the alleged scam. Telangana BJP chief, K Laxman, who is currently sitting on an indefinite hunger strike to build pressure for judicial action, said, “We are demanding a judicial probe into this. Even by the CBI. This is not just mismanagement. This is a huge scam.” He added, “The company that was given the contact for end-to-end technical support was simply not qualified to handle 9.7L children's future.” Meanwhile, many activists are working to expose the alleged scam and said that evaluators should not have handled more than 30 papers per day. However, they were given 100 papers a day.
Professor Jyothsna, who is working with the activists, said, “Globarena has no experience in handling such exams.” Meanwhile, KCR has declared free recounting for students who were declared failed. Also a supplementary exam has been delayed from May 16 amid the alleged scam. The Jana Sena Party has demanded resignation of Education Minister G Jagdish Reddy.
