150 Bangalore University students found mistakes in marks cards

There is always an error in Bangalore University degree marks cards and unfortunately this is not the first time.

Around 150 students of BU, found mistakes in their marks cards. Some of the students' names has been changed, and some students' marks have not been added after revaluations.

Ramya Reddy was shocked when her college informed her on Friday that her third semester M.Sc results were withdrawn and her revised results would be announced this week.

According to Prof Mohan Kumar, former dean of Science in BU, this is probably the first time in the history of the university that P-G results have been withdrawn a good while after the marks cards were handed out to students. It follows on the heels of another fiasco when BU marked 1,000 students absent in the under-graduate exams.

Speaking to Bangalore Mirror, vice-chancellor B Thimme Gowda said, "There were totalling errors by examiners, and this was noticed by a custodian. Our policy is that if mistakes have been committed, we should not hide them."

BU had conducted the Postgraduate science discipline, first and third semester examination in Jan 2013, and results were announced in June 2013.

The marks cards for these exams were distributed by BU in July 2013.

A college principal said, "It is a sort of expose of the university's functioning. After the results were announced, a custodian was checking an answer script casually. She found that at one place, an evaluator had not entered the total marks in words. So she started to re-total the marks. This was when she realised that the marks entered in numerals and words did not tally. When she took out another answer script, she found another totalling mistake. As she picked up answer scripts at random and came across similar bloomers, she realised she had opened a can of worms. The matter was brought to the notice of the vice-chancellor and the registrar (evaluation). The V-C convened a meeting on September 18 wherein he took the erring evaluators to task, saying they did not know simple addition. The varsity has been able to detect totalling errors in the marks of 150 students. Hence, the decision on withdrawing the results of these students and issuing revised results."

College principals were informed and they returned the original result sheets to the university on Friday. When the principals issued notices to the errant evaluators, a few were candid enough to admit their mistakes.

Another college principal said around 30,000 answer scripts across 19 subjects were randomly checked and totalling mistakes were found in 150. "The number of such answer scripts may seem low but one can only imagine how many such mistakes in the past never came to light," he said.

"Several students have seen rise in their marks after re-totalling". Giving some examples, he said, "In the third semester Zoology paper , a student was given 47 marks instead of 56. In a Bio-Technology paper, the earlier total of 53 was later revised to 63, while in an Environmental Science paper, the marks got revised from 37 to 50."

BU, vice-chancellor, Thimme Gowda has decided to take a tough stand in the matter. "The university's rules provide for penalising evaluators Rs 1,000 per mistake, and we will see how to proceed in the matter," he said.