If the first day of the first semester B.Ed exams of colleges affiliated to Bangalore University could be described in one word, it would be ‘chaos.’ Missing names and photographs in the admission registers further added to the existing confusion created by the almost sudden announcement of exam dates by BU. After having postponed the B.Ed exams thrice, the university announced on June 6 that the exams will commence on June 10.
Similar scenes were witnessed in many among the 21 exam centres in and around the city.
Over 600 students from seven different colleges gathered at the exam centre in Sarvajna College of Education to write the first paper on ‘Education in Emerging India’.
However, many of them ended up congregating outside Principal B.P. Madhumati’s office pleading to be let back into the examination hall while it was in commencement.
“We can’t confirm if these students are officially registered or not,” Ms. Madhumati said. Registers of the affiliated colleges were found with incomplete student information; some photographs were missing and most lacked official seals. In addition, Ms. Madhumati was only informed that her college was to be a centre two days before the exam.
“We don’t have the infrastructure to host these many students. I had to declare a holiday and make teachers the invigilators,” she said.
In fact, as a handful of students came to the centre without valid photo IDs and exam tickets, the exam was delayed by a few minutes. In the midst of this confusion, Ms. Madhumati received a phone call from Vice-Chancellor B. Thimme Gowda who asked her to suspend students lacking official information in the registers from the examination. This aroused chaos in the hallways as students, some in tears while others composed, began pleading with invigilators and the principal for help.
“Most of these students haven’t attended a single class in their college. They just come on the final day for the exam. That’s why all of this information is missing in the registers,” Ms. Madhumati said.
“We don’t know what’s going on. How can you blame us for the missing information?” the swarm of students sought to know.
Santanu Goswamy’s, a student from St. Stephen’s College of Education, whose photograph he claimed had fallen out of the register, said: “They pulled me out halfway through my paper and didn’t let me back in,” he said. Another student from the same college, Pramod Kumar, a native of Orissa, went through a similar issue.
He was suspended from the examination hall because his examination ticket didn’t have a photograph attached to it.
