Agony and sorrow took over the skies of Telangana state in India as over 20 students committed suicide in the last two weeks following a botched computer-generated result that declared majority of them as having failed.
According the results, approximately 1 million students took the exams between February and March, and nearly 350,000 failed, causing widespread protests from parents, student groups and political parties.
In one case, the Khaleej Times reported that one student by the name Sirisha set herself on fire in Narayanpet district after the Board of Intermediate Education (BIE) announced that she failed her biology exam.
“Nearly 25 students are reported to have committed suicide due to the faulty results published by the TSBIE. Now, who should be made responsible for the deaths of 30 odd students? And who will compensate the agony caused to thousands of parents?” a letter from India’s Congress said
A panel formed by the Telangana Government has submitted a report adding that the massive failure was caused by software glitch.
The software which was being operated by Globarena Technologies, a Private firm which had been hired by Telagana BIE for a three year term contract to develop software for processing admissions, pre-examination and post-examination results including OMR (optical mark recognition) scanning.
Another instance was where the compromised system was awarding marks to students who were absent in the exams.