8 to 98, it's a snakes and ladders game for Tumakuru girl

A glaring error by one of the evaluators that could have cost a SSLC student an year came to light at the Karnataka Secondary Education Examination Board (KSEEB) office on Thursday where marks scored by the students was entered as eight while the actual marks she scored was 98.

K R Ruchitha from Tumakuru, who had scored 93 in Hindi and 90 in English, was in for a shock when she found that she had scored just eight marks in Kannada.

She, however, walked out of the KSEEB office with a sigh of relief when the Board director confirmed to her that her actual marks were 98. An error by the evaluators in entering marks into the OMR Sheet had lead to the confusion.

Speaking to Deccan Herald, Ruchitha’s father Ramakrishniah said that the family could not believe that the girl who had scored such high marks in other languages could get a single digit score in a language that she was very fluent. “We decided to approach the officials on Thursday and came all the way from Tumakuru. Luckily, with the mediapersons helping us out, the matter was sorted in a few hours,” he said.

Yashoda Bopanna, Director, KSEEB, said, “The girl’s father himself is a teacher. When they approached me, looking at the marks in the other subjects, I asked for her Kannada answer paper immediately. Instead of number nine, zero was marked by the evaluator because of which the data entry was eight as against 98.Action will be taken against the evaluator.”

Like Ruchitha, many students had approached the Board to get the anomalies in the results fixed. There was commotion near the KSEEB office as over 100 students had come either to apply for revaluation or take photo copies of their answer papers.

A few students also claimed that the marks that was variations in the marks displayed on the internet and the one put up on their school notice boards. While it was displayed on the internet that the student had cleared her exams, for one of the girls from Bengaluru, it was displayed on the school list as ‘not completed’.

Also, the fact that the Board has designated just one bank (Corporation Bank) for the payment of the fee has only made the matters worse for students and parents. “When I came here, I was told that I could pay the fee only through Corporation Bank. It was very crowded. This made it all the more tough for us,” said Lakshmi, a parent.

So far, 920 students have applied for re-totalling and photocopies. While 320 had applied on Wednesday, the rest did on Thursday.