Hyderabad: The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on Friday expressed serious concerns over media reports of students in Telangana committing suicides following a goof-up in the intermediate results.
At least 18 students have taken their lives amid mass protests after the Telangana Board of Intermediate Education released the intermediate results in which over three lakh students have reportedly failed.
Taking “suo motu” cognisance of the media reports, the apex human rights body has sought a detailed report from the K Chandrashekhar Rao-led government.
It expressed surprise at the large-scale furore among students and parents and protests by some political parties.
It also called for a thorough probe into the matter to punish the guilty and ensure that there is no recurrence of such incidents.
The NHRC has sought to know why the administration had offered the contract of exam enrolment to a Hyderabad-based private firm, Globalrena Technologies, against the old practice of giving it to government agency, Centre for Good Governance.
The private firm has, however, said that it was handling the task and had executed the contract systematically.
The commission has issued a notice to Chief Secretary SK Joshi and sought a report with four weeks. It has asked Joshi to include details of action taken against the guilty and relief, if any, provided to aggrieved families.
It said the contents of the news reports, if true, raised the issue of serious lapse on the part of the authorities amounting to violation of human rights.
Though the state education ministry and board had initially dismissed the allegations, amid massive protests, Rao called an emergency meeting on Thursday and reportedly reprimanded the education minister and officials concerned.
He also directed the officials to hold re-valuation and re-counting of failed candidates’ results for free. The chief minister has even asked the officials to conduct an advanced supplementary examinations without scope for a year-loss.
Some of the aggrieved students have already the moved the high court.
About 10 lakh students took the Class XII board examination in February 2018 of whom over three lakh have failed making it a gigantic task for the board to conduct supplementary exams for such a large number of students.
Time is also running out for the students who have to appear in the competitive entrance exams like NEET and JEE.
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