Sinlung /
13 September 2011

RTI Throws Light on Mizoram Board Errors

Mizoram-Board-of-School-Education-HSLC-HSSLCAizawl, Sep 13 : As per a recent Supreme Court verdict, the Mizoram Board of School Education (MBSE) has finally disclosed answer sheets of the last Mizoram technical entrance examinations and as suspected, there were errors that could have changed the merit list.

According to the state s apex students body, Mizo Zirlai Pawl had sought copies of answer sheets under the RTI Act on behalf of 20 students who complained about their marks.

Four of these students had their marks wrongly reduced.

These four students, who were supposed to get zero marks for some questions they did give answers to, got negative mark of .25 for each question.

A student in biology group, who ranked 103rd in the merit list, would have ranked 100th had his marks not been wrongly reduced by .75 points, an MZP press release said today.

Another student in engineer group could have scored 155.25 instead of 154, if not for the MBSE’s alleged wrong evaluation.

The revelation came after the MBSE agreed to conduct a joint inspection with the MZP, as instructed earlier by the Mizoram chief information commission.

The MBSE had stonewalled the students requests until the Supreme Court ruled that answer sheets of any examination conducted by any agency in the country should be disclosed under the Right to Information Act.

The MBSE finally agreed to conduct a joint inspection on August 17, the MZP handout said. Moreover, it had also been found that the MBSE committed errors in eleven questions in chemistry group A and two questions in physics A .

The MBSE either gave totally wrong answers, two correct answers in four options or did not give correct option to these questions, according to information obtained by the MZP. Due to these mistakes, a student could have lost 13 marks, the release said.

The disclosure has clearly revealed that the students have been deprived of their rights and suffered from mental torture, alleged the MZP. The presence of mistakes was clearly the reason behind the MBSE’s attempt to hide the truths on the pretext of upholding the board’s honour, it said.

As the damage has been already done, there is no question of re-conducting the entrance examinations or re-evaluating the marks, but efforts should be made to prevent reoccurrence of such mistakes in future exams, the MZP said, adding, The government should in future maintain transparency and should never defy the RTI Act again.

In view of frequent mistakes in the conduct of state technical entrance exams, the MZP urged the authority to hand over the task of conducting the exams for engineering students to All India Entrance Exam (AIEEE) for which Mizoram is one of the centres.

And the government should take steps to establish All India Pre-Medical Test (AIPMT) centre in Mizoram to conduct entrance test for biology students.

Mistakes in the technical entrance exams last year had prompted the state school education minister to tender his resignation which, however, was not accepted by the chief minister.

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