Guardians demonstrate near the school gate in Chanchol on Monday. (Surajit Roy)

Malda, May 5: Guardians of Class IX students gheraoed the headmistress of a girls’ high school in Chanchol today, asking her to cancel the results of the annual examinations that saw 65 of the 108 students fail.

Rani Dakshayini Balika Vidyalay had declared the results on April 30, promoting only 43 of the students to Class X. The next day being May Day, the school was closed and there were no protests.

On Saturday, the guardians met the headmistress, Asima Trivedi, demanding that all the students be promoted. Trivedi was allegedly rude to them and shooed them away. Afterwards, a few guardians went around town in an autorickshaw fitted with a loudspeaker and announced that they would organise a demonstration on Monday.

Apprehending trouble, the school authorities informed police and there was a large deployment of law enforcers in front of the school gate and the headmistress’s office today. The gate was also locked.

Around 11am, however, the school authorities were forced to open the gate as the guardians demanded a meeting with the headmistress. Some of them went inside and demonstrated, while another group sat in front of the gate.

The siege went on till 5pm.

One of the guardians, Abed Ali, who claimed to be a mathematics teacher, said he taught his daughter at home. “It is hard to believe that my daughter scored only two in the subject. I wanted to see her answer script but the headmistress is refusing to show it to me,” Ali added.

Another guardian, Aminul Haq, said according to the mark sheet, his daughter had got 17 in life sciences. “But I forced the school authorities to let me take a look at her answer script and I found that she had secured 25. We told the headmistress that there were mistakes in tabulation, but she did not listen to us,” Haq said. “The school has also stopped showing us the scripts.”

The guardians have also alleged that there were four unit tests for geography when the education board had asked for eight. The headmistress said the rest of the tests could not be conducted because the geography teacher was on leave.

“The girls fared very poorly in the exams. We had warned the guardians but they did not heed us,” Trivedi said. She added that unless ordered by the district inspector of schools, she could not show the scripts to the guardians.

District inspector of schools Chinmay Sarkar said an inquiry would be held.