Srinagar: Kashmir University has blamed college authorities for not properly instructing the procedure of filling OMR (optical mark recognition) sheets to students, leading to “mass failure” in an examination for which results were declared last week.
For the first time Kashmir University introduced OMR procedure for BG level program, and according to the officials most of students were not aware about the procedure of filling OMR sheets, as they had never filled it before.
Kashmir University’s controller Examination, Dr. Mohammad Yousuf Bhat said students were not properly instructed by supervisors on filling up their OMR sheets. In most of cases students had not even filled their roll number properly due to which OMR machine could not read students’ response sheets.
“This was negligence on their part,” he said, adding, even extra 20 minutes were provided to the invigilators and supervisors so that they can demonstrate students without any failure.
“Besides this impetuous approach, at the end of examination instructors had not checked even whether sheet is filled correctly or not and they had signed it randomly,” he said.
Bhat said that university has to declare results at any time and it was never like that if the pass percentage was good only then it will be declared. “By this we want students to identify their mistakes, so that they won’t commit same in future,” he said.
He added: “Every year whenever we declare BG result, we do expect candidates with LO (Later On) result status, which is sometimes due to their internals (pending), attendance or technical error. But this is first time for uploading results we are getting inflow of student in campus,” he added.
After a gap of one year, Kashmir University last week declared the result of BG first year (batch 2016) in which more than 7000 students failed.
Soon after declaration of result, students from various colleges of Kashmir protested against the University of Kashmir.
Kashmir University had issued a detailed statement which reads: “Candidates have not darkened the respective circles on the OMR sheets and have rather put a dot or have encircled the respective answer or have ticked it which couldn’t be read by the OMR machine.”
Therefore, the varsity said, the marks of the objective paper could not be determined and were not added with theory marks of the candidates. “Such OMR sheets are being identified and shall be assessed again by the OMR machine after correcting the mistakes committed by the students,” the statement said.
Talking to the INS, students said OMR sheet was new practice to them and they were not counselled or demonstrated about this practice before.
“Being student of arts, I had never filled OMR sheet before. If administration is blaming us, then why they did not provided us proper instruction of filling those sheets. Before implementation, every new practice is needed to be exercised first,” said Saba Yousuf, B.A student.
Students demand solution on immediate basis as according to them it was costing their precious time.
“We want justice, I agree we may have filled sheets wrongly but even during filling of JKCET examination form, candidate is provided with demonstration copy. They should have demonstrated us beforehand, as this was new concept for us,” said another BG 1st year student.
Mohammad Yousuf Bhat said the varsity was working on it and the issue will be resolved within 15 days. “We are planning to declare new results of these students.”
He added: “We will be sending show cause notice to the college authorities and concerned supervisors for their lackadaisical approach.”
On the issue of the students, who are marked absent in the exam instead of appearing, a Kashmir University official said, “Those candidates have not darkened the respective circles on the OMR sheet under the roll number section.”
