Madras high court asks teachers' board to consider fresh exam for the post of postgraduate assistants

MADURAI: The Madurai bench of the Madras high court on Wednesday directed Teachers Recruitment Board (TRB) chairman Vibhu Nayar to consider the possibility of conducting a fresh examination for the post of postgraduate assistants in Tamil as 47 out of 150 questions were wrong.
The court posted the matter to September 24 for the chairman’s reply.
When the matter came up before Justice S Nagamuthu, the TRB contended that following complaints of errors on the question paper, the board had decided to delete 40 questions and would revaluate the answer scripts for 110 marks.The court rejected the contention and pulled up the board saying TRB’s question papers always carried wrong questions and candidates were forced to seek court’s intervention to set things right. This would ultimately affect the lives of the school students, the judge said.
According to the Supreme Court, a re-examination should be conducted when there are wrong questions. “Are you (TRB) prepared to conduct a fresh examination as one third of the questions were wrong?” the judge asked.
Two candidates — J Antony Clara, 28, of Trichy and S Vijalakshmin of Madurai — filed the writ petitions individually seeking a fresh examination.
On September 10, the court stayed publication of the results of the written examination after finding that about one-third (47 questions) of the questions were wrong.
The TRB had invited applications to fill up 605 vacancies for the post of postgraduate assistants in Tamil, for which written examination was conducted on July 21. Totally, 31,983 candidates appeared for the examination. Of them, 8002 candidates were given the question paper (B-series) which carried the wrong questions.