GUWAHATI, May 8 - In a revelation that has stunned one and all, State Education Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma today claimed that HSLC results in the State had been �manipulated� since 2001 by the Board of Secondary Education, Assam (SEBA) which had been giving �hidden� grace marks to students at the behest of political dispensation.
Sarma told the State Assembly during the Zero Hour that while actually only around 22-23 per cent of the candidates clear the HSLC examinations, 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 a 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 special meeting to determine how much grace marks the students who failed should get in that particular year. In the process, 22 marks scored in the answer script becomes 62 in the marksheet and so on. The hidden marks are in addition to the real grace marks which appear on the marksheet,� 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 60 in one particular year? The government (past) wanted to show a rise in pass percentage every year and hence the tradition,� he said.
The actual level of education is around that 22-25 percentage yardstick, he claimed, and insisted that he was not kept in the loop while he was the Education Minister in the Congress government.
He said as the departmental minister, �I have experience of being asked by the SEBA chairman to fix the desired pass percentage so that they can make it happen. I am not sure if it also happens in Higher Secondary.�
Later, the Education Minister told journalists that he would discuss the matter in the cabinet. �We may constitute a panel of academicians to examine the matter and give recommendations whether or not we should continue with this system of hidden grace marks,� he said.
Sarma, who was the Education Minister for about two years during the last Congress regime in the State before joining the BJP and holds the same portfolio in the current BJP-led coalition government, pointed out that the overall pass percentage has shown significant jump from 25-30 per cent till 2000 to nearly 70 per cent over a period of less than 15 years time.
Noting the seriousness of the matter, Speaker Hitendra Nath Goswami said he will discuss the matter with the Chief Minister and the Education Minister in detail.