For the first time in five years of K. Chandrashekar Rao’s rule, the civil society, student organisations and opposition parties came together unitedly and hit the the streets protesting against the state government. What started as a small issue of discrepancies in evaluation of intermediate (class 11 and 12) results, quickly escalated to a public outrage of unexpected proportion.
Soon after the intermediate results were declared, several parents and students alleged that there was erroneous entry in the marksheets. For some, the scorecard showed that they were absent even though they had appeared for the exam. A few toppers even alleged that they got single-digit marks. Amid this, close to 20 students have committed suicide because of poor performance putting the spotlight on the intermediate results fiasco.
The Board of Intermediate Education (BIE) office in Hyderabad turned into a site of protest as worried and enraged students and their family members demanded answers from government officials. The use of force by police only made matters worse.
The partner company of Intermediate Board, Globarena Technologies Pvt Ltd, responsible for digital processing and uploading of marksheets received a lot of flak for the ‘goof-up’. Since 30 per cent of the intermediate students failed the exams this time, fingers were raised at the IT company for the dismal result.
Though the state government constituted a three-member committee to look into the issue, it was not enough to douse the fire. The top leadership of the TRS government was slammed for their insensitive approach as neither the CM nor any of the senior ministers apologised or tried to reach out to the protestors and pacify them. All that came from the state government’s side was a suggestion to the parents to apply for revaluation. Surprisingly, no action has been taken till date on officials or the IT company. Under immense pressure, the Telangana government took a decision to waive off revaluation fee after Chief Minister KCR held a review meeting with the officials.
Questions have been raised on why favouritism was shown by the state government while awarding the contract to Globarena. There have also been allegations that rules were changed only to help Globarena bag the contract even though it was incompetent to handle such a big assignment.
In the backdrop of student deaths and protests by parents, an NGO Balala Hakkula Sangham moved Telangana High Court. The court has taken serious note of the issue and sought to know from the state government how many days would they need to revaluate the answer sheets of all the students who failed the exam. The state government will reply by Monday.
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Meanwhile, the issue took a political turn with the Congress, the BJP, the Left parties and the TDP intensifying protests. Though only students and their families protested in the initial days without much support from political parties, that was not the case later on. Almost all the top leaders of Congress, including state president Uttam Kumar Reddy, actor and star campaigner Vijaya Shanthi, former MP V. Hanumanth Rao and others protested and expressed solidarity with the students. Congress working president Revanth Reddy wrote to the governor requesting to intervene.
The Left parties and aligned organisation staged protests at various paces.
