Bhubaneswar, June 17: Higher education minister Pradeep Kumar Panigrahy today said that a fact-finding team would be set up to look into the allegation of faulty evaluation of Plus II answer sheets and suggest measures to bring transparency in the examination process.

Replying to a debate on the issue in the Assembly today, the minister said: “The government will introduce e-evaluation of answer scripts from next year. The students can see their answer scripts themselves and check if there is anything wrong in the evaluation process.”

On the issue of fixing responsibility on officials, the minister informed the House that a bill would shortly be introduced in the Assembly in this regard.

“There will be provisions to punish erring officials up to a maximum period of seven years. We will protect the interest of the students,” he said. After the results of the annual Plus Two examination conducted by the Council of Higher Secondary Education were announced last month, several discrepancies have been noticed in the evaluation of the answer sheets itself. The overall pass percentage nose-dived and it was 68.36 as compared to 70. 13 per cent in 2013. Some students who have scored more than 90 per cent in chemistry have been given less than 10 marks in other science papers such as Physics. There were also allegations of students who had qualified for advanced JEE examination, of securing single-digit mark in other papers.

Discrepancies in results were also noticed in the arts stream. The issue was raised through an adjournment motion by Congress MLA Chiranjeeb Biswal. Cutting across party affiliations, the legislators demanded action against those who “played” with the future of the students.

Assuring the members that all possible steps were being taken to assuage the feelings of the aggrieved students, the minister said the process of re-addition/rechecking of answer sheets would be completed by July 31.