Patna: Grappling with widespread flak over its flawed examination system, the Bihar School Examination Board (
BSEB) has initiated the process of cancellation of its affiliation to Vishun Roy (VR) College at Bhagwanpur in Vaishali district.
“We have for now withdrawn our ‘school code’ allotted to the college, which you can assume to be the ‘temporary cancellation’ of affiliation to the college,” BSEB chairman Lalkeshwar Prasad Singh told newspersons on Saturday. Now that the ‘school code’ has been withdrawn, no one as a student of this college can register himself/herself with the BSEB to appear in any of the examinations conducted by it, Singh explained.
The BSEB decision came a day after it conducted a retest of all the 14 Class XII (arts and science) toppers amid raging controversy over some “undeserving” candidates being declared state toppers on the basis of their high scores in written examinations conducted in February-March this year.
The Times of India on Saturday carried a photograph of the school’s director-cum-principal, Bachcha Roy, sharing dais with RJD president Lalu Prasad and his son, Tej Pratap Yadav, who is state health minister. The TOI report suggested that Bachcha’s political clout might help the college go scot-free.
The Bhagwanpur college hogged international headlines after a video of its student, Ruby Roy, went viral on the social media earlier this week. The video showed the girl, who scored 444/500 marks to top the IA exams, pronounce political science as ‘prodigal science’. She described it as a subject on cookery and also ‘guessed’ that the exam was of total 600 marks.
Ruby dodged the retest, pleading she was unwell following the negative press that her video attracted. The performance of the two other students of the college -- Sourabh Shreshtha and Rahul Kumar, who were ranked first and third respectively in the state in ISc exams -- “was not up to the mark in the retest”, the BSEB chairman said.
Incidentally, Sourabh too featured in the viral video, struggling to answer certain basic questions of chemistry.
While Ruby has been “given one more chance” to prove her merit and called for retest on June 11, the results of Sourabh and Rahul have been cancelled. “All the other students did well,” Singh said.
The BSEB chairman said a three-member high-level committee headed by a retired high court judge would be formed to probe the loopholes which led to the faux pas. The panel, which will have a retired bureaucrat and a reputed educationist on it, will be mandated to pinpoint where the forgery with the answer-sheets was committed -- “at the examination centre, during evaluation or anywhere else”.
Singh claimed VR College had been on the BSEB radar because of the unexpected results of its students year after year. “We had formed a committee two months back to probe the college affairs. Its report will come within a week. We will hand over the report to the retired judge-led panel to help it in its probe,” Singh said, adding the initial report “is not positive and, as such, the cancellation of affiliation to VR College is a certainty”.
“One thing should be clear: We are not going to spare whosoever is involved in the ugly episode,” the BSEB chairman said.