The principal of a girls school and some other teachers were gheraoed for 20 hours by the students who had failed in the Class 12 test. The gherao was lifted following the intervention of the senior officials of West Bengal Council for Higher Education. The agitating students were placated only after controller of examination Moloy Roy assured them that their answer scripts and tabulation sheets would be reviewed to see if there was any shortcoming in the evaluation. Late in the evening, the council announced that there were anomalies in evaluation by the school authorities and suggested to conduct fresh examination.
What came as a surprise, however, was the council officials’ decision to seize answer scripts of all examinees. Voicing her unhappiness over this decision, principal Shrimati Ghosh said this may undermine the authority of the school teachers and encourage similar copy-cat agitation by failed students in other schools.
Trouble broke out at Rishi Aurobindo Balika Vidyalaya in South Kolkata at around 3 pm on Monday when 29 students who had failed in their Class 12 pre-board exams gheraoed Ms Ghosh and several other teachers, demanding that they be given pass marks and allowed to sit for the board exams. In total, 105 girls of the school had taken the pre-board exams, out of which 76 had passed but these 29 students had failed in more than two subjects. The unsuccessful students claimed they had been unfairly marked. The parents of some of the failed students also joined them in the gherao.
As news of the siege spread, the police arrived on the spot on Monday evening itself but failed to resolve the situation. Ms Ghosh said the school would not pass the agitating students unless ordered to do so by the officials of the state’s higher secondary council.
She also claimed that she had made calls to several authorities, including the education minister’s office, but there was no intervention.