Laxmi Singh: Acting tough

Jamshedpur, March 31: Jharkhand Academic Council (JAC) has blacklisted 100 “irresponsible” evaluators who checked matriculation and intermediate answer sheets last year.

The council has sent the list of erring evaluators to all district education officers (DEO) across the state and also banned them from evaluating answer sheets for the next three years.

This is the first time that the council, which conducts matriculation and intermediate examinations in the state, has taken such a step.

“The matter came to light when we received a number of applications for re-evaluation of answer scripts from examinees, both matriculate and intermediate, last year. I personally checked the answer scripts and found a number of anomalies which prompted us to take such a harsh step,” said Laxmi Singh, chairperson of JAC, while speaking to The Telegraph over phone from Ranchi.

Referring to some of the anomalies, Singh said a number of answer scripts did not have marks against answers in the inside pages but had a total figure on the top page, suggesting that the examiners had given a figure arbitrarily, without going through the answer sheets thoroughly.

Also, Singh found out that the total marks given by the examiners in some papers were very different when the marks were tallied again during re-evaluation.

“We have decided not to tolerate this kind of irresponsibility, especially as far as examinations are concerned. We have thus sent the list to the DEOs asking them to take action against the said examiners as soon as possible. I hope others would learn a lesson from this,” added Singh.

Since the decision came late, some of the examiners in question have started evaluating the answer papers for this year’s board examinations. JAC has asked the district education officers to debar them as soon as they get the letter along with the list. The papers the concerned examiners have already completed evaluating will be re-checked by the head examiner.

The evaluation of answer sheets for this years board examinations began yesterday.