HC stays publication of TRB Tamil exam results

MADURAI: The Madurai bench of the Madras high court on Tuesday stayed the publication of results of the written examination conducted by the Teachers Recruitment Board (TRB) for the post of postgraduate assistants in Tamil, on July 21.
The stay was granted on a writ petition filed by one S Vijayalakshmi after the court found that one-third of question of paper was wrong. The question paper had 150 objective type questions.
The petitioner said that more than 40 questions had been wrongly printed and it was fair to award grace marks for those attended by her. Besides, the secretary of TRB should take responsibility for the errors, she pleaded.
The matter came up before Justice S Nagamuthu on Tuesday. During the hearing, the government pleader agreed that there were mistakes in the question paper.
But the government pleader said the students who claimed to be postgraduates could always apply reason and analytical brain to overcome the problem of comprehension of the small printing mistakes and should come out with right options.
Pulling up the government side, Justice Nagamuthu asked, "Do you know Tamil has been recognised as a semmozhi (classical language). Are you not ashamed to set such a question paper with lot of mistakes and errors?"
"We are in Tamil Nadu. The question paper is for recruiting Tamil teachers to work in Tamil Nadu. If the question is not clear, how can we expect the students to understand them and give their reply?," he further asked.
If there are one or two mistakes, it is okay. But one third of the question paper is wrong. To err is human, but this is too much, the judge said and stayed the publication of results.