Calcutta HC directs formation of expert committee by Visva-Bharati Univ V-C

Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court on Wednesday directed the formation of an expert committee led by the vice-chancellor (V-C) of Visva-Bharati University to scrutinise the disputed questions and answer keys pointed by candidates of Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) 2017.

Visva-Bharati University V-C was directed to form the committee which will go through the questions and identify the correct answers. They will check the answers of the candidates as well.

Justice Rajasekhar Mantha directed the committee to submit a report within a month. The matter will be next heard on June 11 and further decision will be taken based on the report.

The petitioners are candidates who had appeared for TET 2017.

One set of petitioners had raised disputes with regards to answer keys to the 12 questions while another had raised disputes with regards to answer keys to 21 questions.

It was alleged that either the questions are vague or more than one answer key is possible.

The Court was earlier inclined to refer the entire set of questions and answer keys – 150 – to an independent expert. The other view was that only disputed questions should be referred to the experts. Justice Mantha had observed three possible actions which could be adopted by the Court in this matter.

The first was to strike out questions with more than one possible answer which would result in reduction of marks awarded to all candidates and other ways marks can be awarded to the candidates who attempted the dispute answer key question.

The third option was award marks only to those candidates who have chosen the correct answer key by the expert as well as those who have given the answer as per the Board.