Controversy haunts the Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) year after year. In the Intermediate (Class XII) results published on June 6, some students have scored more than the total marks while some have got blank mark-sheets. After two days of protests, the BSEB on Saturday said the aggrieved students could apply for scrutiny of their answer sheets till June 16.
With 52.95% pass percentage, this year’s result was up from last year’s by nearly 17% (35.24%). But for the last two days, many students have been protesting outside the BSEB office in Patna over “grave discrepancies” in their marksheets. On Monday, the police had to baton-charge the protesters to disperse them from the BSEB office in Patna.
More than the full marks
Some students got more than 100% in some subjects, some got blank marksheets while some others who claimed to have qualified the IIT-JEE (advanced) test were marked “failed”.
One such student is Bhim Kumar from Arwal district who got 38 out of the total 35 marks in mathematics (theory) paper and 37 out of 35 in the objective-type questions.
“I am not shocked as such discrepancies in Intermediate result have been happening in the State board exams for long,” he said. Similar is the case of Sandeep Raj from East Champaran who has scored 38 out of 35 in physics theory. Rahul Kumar from Darbhanga got 40 out of 35 in mathematics objective paper.
Janvi Singh from Vaishali was surprised when she got 18 marks in Biology, for which she claimed she did not appear. Satya Kumar, too, has been given marks in papers for which he did not appear.
Criticism
Many political leaders, including senior Bihar BJP leader and Rajya Sabha MP C.P. Thakur, have criticised the BSEB.
“The examination system in Bihar continues to be a mess... incompetent officials have to be removed immediately from the BSEB,” said Mr. Thakur.
However, the BSEB on Saturday said the aggrieved students could apply for scrutiny of their answer sheets till June 16.
As a result of scrutiny, the applicants might end up getting the same marks or more or even less, said a BSEB press release.
For the last two years, BSEB Intermediate results have been hitting headlines for the wrong reasons. It was observed that while one ‘topper’ failed to even pronounce the name of her subject properly, another couldn’t sing basic tunes of music while scoring high in the subject.
This year, the BSEB took several strict measures like physical verification of toppers before publishing the results to avoid controversy.