Hyderabad: Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan has summoned senior officials of the Telangana state government over the recent announcement of separate schedules for Intermediate exams in the two states.
The Telangana government will press its case for conducting separate exams citing administrative control, immunity to students in Telangana if something goes wrong in Andhra Pradesh and appointment of officials.
The Board of Intermediate Education had recently announced separate exam schedules for both Telangana state and Andhra Pradesh.
First-year Intermediate exams will begin from March 9 in Telangana state while they will start from March 11 in Andhra Pradesh. Second-year exams are scheduled to begin a day later in each state.
Telangana education secretary Vikas Raj will meet the Governor on Tuesday. Though Andhra Pradesh had requested for common Intermediate exams, the Telangana government had not agreed.
Telangana’s contention is that exams shouldn’t be common after the state has been divided. The government’s argument will broadly be based on issues like administrative control and immunity for students in TS from problems in Andhra Pradesh. Officials will argue that in case of any eventualities like question paper leaks in a region in Andhra Pradesh or vice versa, exams in both states wouldn’t have to be cancelled as the question papers picked for the exams would be different and on different days.
Again, if exams were to be cancelled in AP due to a natural calamity, Telangana state would still be able to hold the exams. Also, with two states and a single Board of Interm-ediate and common exa-ms, issues would crop up over which state’s directions must the Board follow to conduct the exams. Separate exams would mean that the Board can take instructions from each government about exa-ms in its own territory.
The Telangana government is also pressing for separate Boards in the two states. As reported earlier in these columns, it is even seeking to exercise complete control over the existing Board since it is a 10th Schedule listed body and questions of bifurcation don’t arise.
However, the crucial question that arises is with respect to Eamcet. AP government is still expecting Eamcet to be common next year and in that case, there will have to be normalisation of Intermediate marks for the two states or the weightage needs to be done away with altogether.
Telangana is also considering a separate Eamcet, which would mean students writing two Eamcets instead of one while also needing normalisation.
