RTI: MU wrongly failed 35,000 students last year

MUMBAI: As many as 35,000 students—or close to 36% of the over 97,000 who applied for revaluation of over 1.81 lakh answer papers—had been wrongly marked as failed in the Mumbai University examinations of 2017. These students cleared the bar after revaluation, revealed an RTI query.

A total of 97,313 applicants filed for revaluation, perhaps the largest student cohort in recent history, reflecting the fact that large numbers of candidates have begun to lose trust in the university’s assessment process. In the previous three years, between 2014 and 2016, approximately 73,000 students—or one in three—were wrongly failed in examinations conducted by the university, raising questions over the quality of evaluation.

When the summer session exams concluded, 49,596 students had doubts over the scores marked in their 85,068 answer books and they subsequently applied for revaluation. Of these, 16,739 cleared their exams.

Again, in the second half of 2017, a total of 47,717 candidates applied to get 76,086 scripts revalued. Of these, 18,254 cleared the exams after their answer books were reassessed. During the first half of 2016, 16,934 of the 44,441 students who applied for revaluation cleared the exam, revealed the RTI query. “Students taking the Mumbai University exam are losing faith in its assessment,” said RTI activist Vihar Durve. “While 80,000 candidates applied for revaluation in all of 2014, the number of disgruntled candidates had gone up to close to a lakh now,” he added.

The situation is more confounding for students who don’t receive revaluation results in time and are thus forced to appear for supplementary exams.