Ranchi, July 5: The state cabinet today decided to give double the stipulated grace marks to students who had failed to clear the intermediate examinations conducted by Jharkhand Academic Council (JAC) this year, leaving academics dismayed and furious.
Bowing to pressure from students who cleared competitive entrance examinations but failed the intermediate, the cabinet okayed a HRD department resolution to grant those who failed in one subject grace marks up to 10 per cent of the total, and those who failed in two subjects grace marks up to six per cent of the total in each subject.
Earlier, according to JAC norms, they were given five per cent grace marks in one subject and up to three per cent each in two subjects.
Though today’s decision will benefit over 16,235 students who had failed, academics were vocal in expressing their displeasure. “Rules already permit grace marks. But additional grace marks will affect all concerned. A student will forever have to live with the stigma that he or she did not clear the examination on merit,” said former principal of Marwari College Javed Ahmad.
He expressed the fear that henceforth, every time students failed, the unions would take to the streets to protest and garner grace marks for them, leading to chaos.
Ahmad was supported by former principal of Netarhat Residential School K.S. Prasad. “Results shouldn’t be mechanical. When it saw that so many students had failed, JAC should have formed a committee to analyse the reason and taken steps to minimise damage by giving grace marks before publishing the results. The entire process should have been kept confidential,” he said.
Blaming students and parents alike, head of the department of physics in Ranchi University J.N. Prasad said this was not the first time that students who had cleared engineering entrance exams had failed to clear the intermediate hurdle. “Students, parents and others should fight for real issue, like lack of infrastructure in colleges, teacher scarcity etc. Not for marks,” he said.
Incidentally, the HRD department resolution that led to today’s cabinet decision attributed the high failure percentage to students ignoring the intermediate courses for the sake of medical and engineering entrance tests. It also pointed to a decline in academic standards in intermediate colleges.
The resolution also conceded that the step to revise grace marks could not be termed commendable, but the decision was being taken in the “interest of students and people’s aspirations.”
Principal secretary in cabinet co-ordination department Aditya Swaroop maintained that the revised grace marks was a one-off affair and would not be adopted for any future examination conducted by JAC.
He added that 7,866 arts examinees, 4,757 science and 3,612 students commerce students will benefit from this decision.
As many as 1,04,333 had appeared for the exam from the science stream, of which just 29,266 (or 28.05 per cent) cleared it. Last year, the figure was 30.33 per cent.
Commerce registered a 42.44 pass percentage this year vis-à-vis last year’s 58.99. Out of 46,769 students, 19,850 cleared the exams. The pass percentage dipped in the arts stream too with 52.66 per cent clearing it compared to last year’s 61.78 percent. A total of 75,176 out of 1,42,740 students passed.
Yesterday, the chief minister had attended a meeting with HRD department officials where JAC chairperson Laxmi Singh was also present.
JAC has denied irregularities in evaluation of answer-books and pleaded that it should not be held responsible for poor results.
Incidentally, last year, the Union HRD ministry had imposed 60 per cent marks in intermediate examinations as requisite for taking joint entrance examinations.
