THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A mix-up in the question papers issued to candidates appearing for the part one, paper one(English) of the BA/B.Sc examinations of the University of Kerala on Monday led to the postponement of the examinations to June 2.
Regular candidates and those who failed to clear the exams previously appeared for the examinations on Monday. While the former were to write the examinations according to the 2006 syllabus, the latter were to have written the examination as per the 2005 syllabus. However, when the question papers were distributed to candidates it was found that all questions were based on the 2006 syllabus.
“The 2005 admission candidates had to study a book called Prime Prose while the 2006 admission candidates had to study a book called The Other Harmony. There was no question paper based on the first text book,” a university official explained.
Agitated candidates walked out of examination halls when they realised the mix-up. In MG College and in the St. Joseph’s school, here, there were angry exchanges between the candidates and the invigilators.
Later the university announced that the examinations for those appearing under the 2005 syllabus had been postponed
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Kerala M.K. Ramachandran Nair said a preliminary inquiry found that the question paper setter had failed to prepare questions as per the 2005 syllabus.
“The scrutiny board that is supposed to detect any defects in question papers also failed to detect this error,” he pointed out and added that the University would consider debarring the question paper setter from preparing question papers for university examinations. According to sources in the University the question paper setter is a senior professor of M.G. University.
The B.Com part one English examinations were conducted in an incident-free manner on Monday afternoon.