Punjab School Education Board (PSEB) accepted in the Punjab and Haryana high court on Friday that the mixing of question booklets in the printing press had led to the distribution of a different set to some candidates in the Punjab State Teachers’ Eligibility Test (PSTET-2) on December 13, 2015.
Responding to a petition filed by three Sangrur candidates, board’s finance and development officer (FDO) Gurtej Singh said six complaints about the goof-up had led the board to form an inquiry committee of experts, the recommendations of which had now been implemented. He submitted that for questions not printed or not relating to the passage, and for which Punjabi and English versions did not tally, the six candidates would get full grace marks.
For questions from the backup papers, which were from the syllabus and of the same difficulty level as the actual test problems, a separate answer key had been prepared and the candidates given grace marks accordingly, the FDO further submitted. The expert committee had three principals from private colleges, one of them retired.
Petitioners’ counsel HC Arora said the committee had been formed in a clandestine manner and its members handpicked. He said some high-level committee of teacher from Panjab University should look into the dispute. The single judge bench of justice GS Sandhawalia has posted the matter for January 29 and directed the board to file a detailed affidavit.
{{/usCountry}}Petitioners’ counsel HC Arora said the committee had been formed in a clandestine manner and its members handpicked. He said some high-level committee of teacher from Panjab University should look into the dispute. The single judge bench of justice GS Sandhawalia has posted the matter for January 29 and directed the board to file a detailed affidavit.
{{/usCountry}}The petitioners had submitted that their question booklet, though labelled ‘set 1’, had all 150 questions different from the set-1 given to the rest of the candidates in the PSTET-2 on December 13. The board had four sets of question papers, each containing the same 150 questions but in a different order.