In a surprising development, all the first semester students of Industrial Training Institutes of Arakalgud taluk, who appeared for the All-India Trade Test, conducted by the National Council of Vocational Training (NCVT) in January this year, have failed.
Around 300 students of 10 institutions in the taluk appeared for the examination held at the government ITI in Arakalgud. When results were declared on May 15, all of them had failed. “Answers are written on OMR sheets. The NCVT has ruled out revaluation, stating that there is no scope of errors while evaluating. The students have to take the exams again,” said the principal of a private ITI, on condition of anonymity.
A principal of an ITI said the officers, not familiar ITI exams, distributed wrong question papers to students. The question paper meant for repeaters was distributed to fresh candidates and that of fresh candidates to repeaters.
“The chief examiners have to download question papers online minutes before the exams start. They downloaded wrong papers. In fact, we had raised objections about anomalies on the day of exam itself. Wrong entry of question paper code on the OMR sheets can be the major reason for this result. We had sent reports to the director and joint director of examinations. But, they just forwarded our complaints to the NCVT”, he said.
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The Directorate of Employment and Training is also suspecting wrong entry of question papers’ code on the OMR as the reason. When The Hindu contacted P.K. Nagaraj, Joint Director (DET) of Mysore division, on Saturday, he said he too had received complaints on the results from a couple of ITIs.
“This must have happened because of wrong entry of question paper code. However, it has to be ascertained by the NCVT in Delhi,” he said.