Baishali Mukherjee

West Bengal’s education department and the education system have been under scanner for the past few years. The government has faced severe embarrassment regarding its repeated failure in the sector including the multi-crore school-teacher recruitment scam, mid-day meal fund misappropriation, campus violence, student death on campus etc. Moreover, elections have not been held in the state government funded colleges of Bengal and Trinamool Congress’ student wing Trinamool Chhatra Parishad is illegally in control of the union bodies. They are regularly misappropriating and/or misusing funds and making a mockery of the concept of democratisation through student participation.

Adding to the discomfiture of the TMC on November 1, a sensational allegation emerged from the University of Calcutta. It was reported that answer sheets of 120 MA (Bengali) first year students have gone missing. Among the missing answer sheets, some have been allegedly burned, while others were simply left unattended and neglected.

The answer sheets were kept with examiners of three colleges. Questions are being raised on how such important documents like university answer sheets go missing. The incident has left the university in a great dilemma regarding how to assess the students.

Hundreds of students from Bengal and neighbouring states choose University of Calcutta for higher education and incidents like this are bad news for the state government. While there have been previous complaints about marks being lost, the allegation of answer sheets going missing is a first. However, the acting Vice-Chancellor of the University of Calcutta, Shanta Dutta (De), has claimed that similar incidents have occurred in the past, but they were never made public, as many either support the ruling party or remain silent out of fear.

On November 3, Dutta (De) said that decisions have been made to ensure that the affected students do not suffer because of the incident. According to sources, two proposals have been made by the university authorities. One is to evaluate the students based on their highest marks in other subjects, or alternatively, to conduct a re-examination. 

The University of Calcutta is also considering taking strict action against the three examiners involved. According to sources, a note will be added to their service records. Accordingly, the three colleges involved in the case of missing answer sheets have been verbally instructed to form a committee to take action against the examiners and submit a report to the university regarding the measures taken. 

Also read: Calcutta University PG seats vacant, especially in math; new counseling initiated