On Thursday close to 1000 students who were seen protesting outside the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) office here in ITO, Delhi since Monday demanding that the institute change the exam laws to add re-checking ended their protest following the constitution of an independent committee to look into examination processes.
The students claimed that the valuation of the answer sheets was not done correctly. The protesting students were seen camping outside the institute between 11 AM and 5 PM demanding that there should be a change in law and re-checking of the answer sheets must be allowed and not just re-evaluation.
The students had been demanding amendment of Section 39 (4) of The Chartered Accountants Regulations, 1998. According to the act, the students can only apply for re-evaluation and not re-checking.
The five-member committee includes PC Jain, government nominee, convenor; Justice (CA) Anil R Dave, former judge, Supreme Court; (CA) Ved Jain, Past President, ICAI; (CA) Amarjit Chopra, Past President, ICAI and (CA) Girish Ahuja, renowned educationist.
Re-checking means, only the totalling of marks is checked whereas in re-evaluation, the whole paper is checked and the marks are also totalled again. The charter of demands of the student was that they be:
- Provided the option of Re-Correction of the answer sheet.
- Penalise the exam evaluators if mistakes or discrepancies are found in their work.
- Give Question Booklet of MCQs and release correct Answers.
- Centralised Evaluation.
- Allow students to mark the circles on OMR sheets in exams with pens.
All these demands of protesting students are justified and should be implemented as soon as possible so that the investigation process can be completely transparent. However, the sad part is that the mainstream media of the country did not raise any voice in support of these students. But when some journalists reported this news, the motives of these students who were protesting were questioned.
The #dearicaipleasechange was trending on twitter as the students wanted support from wherever they could garner but the controversial NDTV journalist and the newly-crowned “Gauri Lankesh Memorial Award” winner laughed at the matter and taunted students saying “They(students) themselves never follow such news when it trends but when trouble came their way, they resorted to twitter in the hope that TV channels will cover their plight.” He further went on to mockingly say “India is the only country where student protests for the exam to be conducted and also for how the exam answer-sheets should be checked.”
Journalists like Ravish Kumar time and again do not miss out on the slightest of opportunity to belittle the government and ridicule it without doing proper research but this time he tried to shame the protesting students who had to go through the whole ordeal of sitting outside ICAI’s office for consecutive four days.
The ICAI needs to pull up its socks too and address the demands of students at the earliest.