Student suicides in Telangana take on political overtone

The furore over bungling in the evaluation and tabulation of marks of the junior college examination in Telangana acquired political overtones with opposition parties taking to the streets in protest. They are demanding the resignation of the education minister and action against top officials of the department and the private firm that was awarded the contract for data processing.

Facing anger from students and parents in the wake of suicides by 20 students across the state since the declaration of results on April 19, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government responded by ordering a probe into the lapses by an expert committee and announced re-evaluation of the answer sheets of nearly three lakh students who were failed in the 12th standard exam.

Political overtones

When the bungling came to light soon after the results were announced, the students and parents held demonstrations before the office of the Telangana State Board of Intermediate Education (TSBIE) in Hyderabad.

What began as an agitation by student activists and groups of parents soon acquired political overtones with the opposition Congress, BJP and left parties targeting the TRS government for ‘playing with the lives of the students’ and demanded the resignation of the education minister.

The government’s assurances failed to cut much ice with the opposition parties. Education Minister Jagadeesh Reddy, who is in the eye of the storm, assured that appropriate remedial measures would be taken based on the report by a three-member expert committee that found lapses in the conduct of the examination, evaluation procedures and processing of the mark sheets.

Centre to step in

Among the opposition parties, the BJP has been the most aggressive in taking up the issue. The party’s Telangana unit president K Lakshman went on an indefinite fast seeking justice for the students. However, he called off the fast on May 3 following an appeal from party president Amit Shah. The Union Minister of State for Home Hansraj Ahir flew down to the city to meet Lakshman and offered him a glass of lime juice to break the fast. The BJP leader has since been discharged from Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) where he was shifted following his arrest from the dharna site on April 29.

“We will soon meet Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and other leaders in Delhi, seeking central government’s intervention in the matter,” Lakshman told The Federal.

The BJP leadership feels that though education is a state subject, the union government can intervene and seek a report in view of the seriousness of the issue. “We are also planning to meet the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) over the detention of our party workers and how force was used to suppress the agitation by students and organisations like the ABVP,” he said.

Meanwhile, the party has prepared an action plan to mount pressure on the state government for a judicial probe into the lapses. “Despite a spontaneous agitation by students, there was no response from the government as it is dictatorial and autocratic,” the BJP leader alleged.

Asserting that the BJP would stand by the students, he appealed to them not to take the extreme step. He also hit out at the TRS working president and Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao’s son KT Rama Rao for his remark that the opposition parties were resorting to “cheap politics” over the issue.

CBI probe

“The state government has not seriously pondered why more than three lakh students failed (out of over nine lakh students who appeared for the exams),” Union Minister Ahir said.

The Centre would check the technical issues of the matter and even examine the possibility of recommending a CBI probe if the state government failed to take up the issue with due compassion, Ahir warned. “We don’t interfere in the work of any state government. But, we cannot leave the students in the lurch,” the minister said.

Apart from resignation of the education minister, the opposition parties’ demands include suspension of TSBIE secretary and other officials of the board, judicial inquiry into the episode and paying compensation to families of students who committed suicide.

However, the BJP’s call for a state-wide bandh over the issue on May 2 did not evoke much response, with normal life remaining unaffected.

The Telangana Congress demanded a judicial probe by a sitting High Court judge into the alleged irregularities committed by the board officials and Globarena Technologies, the city-based firm that was hired by the government to do data and result processing.

“The blunders committed by the TSBIE in the exam results have caused immense agony to thousands of students and their parents. The government should immediately suspend the board officials for their callous approach,” AICC spokesperson Dr Sravan Dasoju said.

Galore of errors

About 9.74 lakh students appeared for the intermediate exam in March this year. Of them, 3.28 lakh failed. Some students and their parents claimed even meritorious students have scored low marks.

There has been a flood of complaints from students and parents about glaring discrepancies in the evaluation and tabulation of marks. Some students have been wrongly declared as ‘failed’ and ‘absent.’ Many bright students who did well in the first year failed in the second year of the course. Some students were shocked to find that they were given zero marks.

Several toppers in the first year of the two-year course failed to clear the exam due to the alleged blunders committed by the board in evaluation and processing of marks. In some cases, wrong subject name was printed on the students’ mark sheets.