Members of Yuva Morcha of the Bharatiya Janata Party staged a protest here on Friday demanding resignation of Minister of State for Primary and Secondary Education Kimmane Ratnakar in the wake of the alleged discrepancies that have surfaced in the result of the second year Pre-University examination announced recently.
Addressing the protest meet, Bhavani Rao More, president of the district unit of the morcha, said the discrepancies in the result had created apprehension among students. The complaints regarding the allotment of marks were pouring in after the announcement of results. There was no uniformity in the marks secured by the students posted on different websites. It was unfortunate that some students had been marked absent for a few papers even though they had written the examination, he said.
The officials of the Department of PU Education had not made proper arrangements for conducting the examination and evaluation of answer scripts. Students were awarded grace marks for errors in question papers. Owing to the mistakes committed by the evaluators, the students were forced to spend huge money on getting photo copies of answer scripts for re-evaluation and re-totalling. Students from low income groups could not afford to bear this expenditure, he said.
As large-scale discrepancies in evaluation and announcement of results had been reported this time, the fee collected for providing photo copies of answer scripts for re-evaluation and re-totalling should be totally waived. Discrepancies in the second PU result would have a cascading effect on the rankings of students in Common Entrance Test (CET), conducted for admission to professional courses and the seat allotment, which was done on the basis of this ranking, he said.
He urged the government to postpone the CET counselling process till the confusions in the results were cleared. Mr. Ratnakar, who was expected to monitor the entire examination process, had failed to discharge his duty, properly, he said.
Mr. More urged Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to order a probe into the discrepancies and drop Mr. Rathnakar from his ministry, immediately.
Functionaries of the BJP K.E. Kanthesh, Vishwas, Rajesh Kamath, P. Chidanand and Malathesh took part in the protest.
