DU permits admissions of Kerala board students after confusion over marksheets

NEW DELHI: Over 100 admissions of students of the Kerala board were put on hold by the Delhi University (DU) over a confusion related to their marksheets, but the matter was resolved after officials contacted the board in the southern state, sources said on Wednesday. Amid a large number of students from the Kerala board applying to DU colleges, that too a majority of them being perfect scorers, an issue over their marksheets had risen on Monday, leading the admission branch of the university to direct the colleges to put the admissions on hold.

A majority of these admissions had taken place in north campus colleges, the sources said. According to a source, three Kerala boards are recognised by the Council Of Boards of School Education in India (COBSE) -- the Kerala Board of Public Examination, the Kerala Board of Higher Secondary Education and the Board of Vocational Higher Secondary Education.

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"There was confusion when some students submitted marksheets issued by the Directorate of Higher Education, Kerala. We asked the colleges to put the admissions of these students on hold. After we contacted officials from Kerala, we found out that it is an authentic board and is approved by the COBSE. By 3 pm on Tuesday, we mailed to the colleges, asking them to approve the admissions that were put on hold," the source said.

Explaining the marksheet issue, he said the schools in which these students studied were probably affiliated to the Andhra Pradesh board earlier, but then there was a split. "There is a Board of Higher Secondary Education, which issued the Class 10 marksheets, while the board for Class 12 was being controlled by the Directorate of Higher Education, which issued the Class 12 marksheets. Talking about the marking given by the Kerala board, the source said it gives the marks of Class 11 as well as Class 12 in the marksheets.

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"A student has 92, 93 or 94 marks in Class 11 but 100 in Class 12. But since the DU has a rule that it will consider only Class 12 marks and not an average of the marks of Class 11 and Class 12, we are going by the Class 12 marks," he added.

According to data shared by the DU, there are 4,824 applicants from the Kerala Board of Higher Secondary Education and most of them have scored perfect marks. Rakesh Kumar Pandey, a member of RSS-affiliated teachers' body National Democratic Teachers' Front, hinted at a "conspiracy" behind the high number of applicants from the southern state.

"The invasion of Kerala board students with perfect 100 per cent marks cannot be considered as unplanned. It hints at something that must be investigated. There is no way that one can accept this inexplicable flow of students from the Kerala board as normal. Majority of these students are comfortable neither in Hindi nor in English. All these students do not have 100 per cent marks in Class 11," he said in a statement.

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Pandey said the DU should implement an entrance examination system. He called it a "marks jihad" and was slammed for his comments by the Students' Federation of India (SFI).

The SFI said the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and its evaluation should not be the deciding factor in admissions in the DU. "It has also been identified that the CBSE and its methods are being the deciding factor regarding concerns of other state boards. These tendencies have to stop and the university must be comprehensive," the Left-affiliated students' union said in a statement. It also alleged that a "particular state board" is being discriminated against.

"The DU is bound to admit students satisfying all the eligibility criteria. It is a matter of shame that applicants are being discriminated against based on their board, while the hard work put in by the applicants from these varying boards are the same," the SFI said. It also slammed Pandey for using terms such as "marks jihad".

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"The university must put in place a mechanism through which it can clarify its doubts regarding different boards, their syllabus, marks distribution and calculation rather than putting the applicants at stake.... We hope the university will issue necessary orders to smoothen the admission process for the students of the Kerala Board of Secondary Education as for anybody from any other state board," it said.