GUWAHATI, May 8 - Creating a flutter, Assam Education minister Himanta Biswa Sarma today said that HSLC results in the State had been �manipulated� since 2001 by the Board of Secondary Education, Assam (SEBA) at the behest of the political dispensation.
Sarma told the State Assembly during the Zero Hour that while actually only around 20-22 per cent of the candidates clear the HSLC exams, the results are manipulated by the SEBA to inflate the pass percentage to over 60 at the instance of the �political masters�.
The Education minister also called for constitution of the House Committee or a panel of academicians to examine the matter.
�There is nothing wrong in the evaluation by the teachers. The teachers give the right marks. But before compiling the results, the SEBA holds a meeting and takes a resolution to give grace marks to the students who failed. In the process, 22 marks scored in the answerscript becomes 62 in the marksheet and so on,� the minister said, expressing concern at the quality of education in the State.
He said the �tradition� has been going on since 2001. �Or else, how can the pass percentage jump from 25-30 in the 1990s to more than sixty in one particular year? The government (past) wanted to show a rise in pass percentage every year and hence the tradition,� he said.