Telangana teachers sacked for giving ‘0’ marks instead of 99  

This is the most glaring and classic example of the scale of goof-up in Telangana Board of Intermediate examinations with a student getting '0' marks instead of '99'in a subject.

Gajji Navya failed in Intermediate Second Year (12th standard) as she scored '0' marks in Telugu paper. This student from Mancherial district (Hall ticket number 1933216764) scored 99 marks in Commerce, 96 in Civics, 95 in Economics and 68 in English.

She was shocked to see the results declared by the Telangana Board of Intermediate Education (BIE) on April 18. She could not believe when she saw '0' in Telugu as she had scored 98 in Telugu paper in 11th standard and equally good marks in the remaining subjects.

With a leading Telugu daily highlighting her plight, the BIE swung into action and after checking her answer sheet revised the marks obtained in Telugu to 99. The incident caused huge embarrassment to the Board.

With 21 students committing suicide and many students like Navya coming out in open to vent their anger, the state government was forced to order re-verification of answer sheets of 3.28 lakh students who failed to obtain the pass marks. A total of 9.47 students had appeared in the exams for both First and Second Year in February-March.

After an inquiry into Navya's case, BIE suspended a teacher and imposed fine on another. It announced that it has imposed ₹5,000 fine against Uma Devi, a teacher of a private school who evaluated Telugu paper of Navya. She was also sacked by her school management.

BIE also suspended Vijay Kumar, a teacher of a tribal welfare school, who had served as a scrutinizer but failed to notice the blunder.

BIE announced the action against the two teachers late on Sunday, a day after a three-member committee submitted its report to the government, which admitted to the discrepancies.

However, the opposition parties and student groups are demanding action against the higher-ups in the Board and also the information technology company for the massive bungling.

They alleged that BIE was shielding those who committed serious blunders like giving single digit marks to many students who had done well in First Year exams and also marking many students as 'absent' though they had in fact appeared in the exams.

While free re-verification of answer scripts of all failed students was undertaken free of cost, thousands of students who passed the exams but not satisfied with the marks given also applied for re-valuation with the payment of prescribed fee.