Bihar school board allows for scrutiny of answer sheets of intermediate students after facing protests

Patna: Facing students protest over alleged discrepancies in mark sheets of intermediate examinees this year in Bihar, the examining body on Saturday said an opportunity was being provided to aggrieved candidates for scrutiny of their answer sheets till 16 June. [caption id=“attachment_3798935” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. CNN-News18[/caption] In a press release, the Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) said that as a result of scrutiny the applicants may end up getting the same marks or more or even less, depending upon their respective cases. Intermediate examinees have been staging a demonstration here in front of the BSEB office for the past few days with many of them claiming that they have cleared competitive tests like JEE and NEET but because of their low score in intermediate exams they might stand deprived of a chance to appear for counselling. Many political leaders, including senior BJP MP CP Thakur, have criticised the state of affairs. Thakur said the examination system in Bihar continues to be in a mess. However, referring to a number of instances cited in the media wherein examinees have been awarded the same marks as last year or even higher marks than the aggregate for a subjective paper this year, the BSEB clarified these relate only to candidates who took re-examination this year for improvement. The rules provide that if the marks obtained last year are higher than those secured this year, the marks of last year would be awarded to such candidates. Besides, following change in the pattern of questions the aggregate marks for subjective papers stood reduced this year. This may explain the marks obtained last year being higher than the aggregate marks for this year, the release claimed. Results for the intermediate exams were declared earlier this week wherein, notably, this year’s NEET topper Kalpana Kumari also topped the science stream. Questions were, however, raised about Kalpana’s low attendance as she had been preparing for NEET for quite long staying away from Bihar, to which the BSEB clarified that there was no minimum required attendance for candidates wishing to appear in the intermediate exams.