Telugu students cry foul over Group-I results

HYDERABAD: Around 100 candidates who appeared for Group-I main examinations but did not qualify for interviews organised a protest in front of the AP Public Service Commission on Monday, alleging the latter had done injustice to Telugu medium students.They pointed out that of 1,000 students who took the examination in English, 350 had qualified for interviews while only 66 qualified from among 4,500 students who wrote in Telugu. They also alleged that among those who qualified for interviews, as many as 120 candidates were from Tirupati alone.A Rajaylakshmi, a GroupI aspirant, said a 50marks question in General Studies paper was translated wrongly in Telugu, leading to many candidates writing about a completely different topic. While the APPSC gave the English question as 'Impact of Reality Shows on Households', in Telugu it was given as 'Pratyaksha Pradarshanala Prabhavam'. Many Telugu candidates answered the question assuming it as effect of live TV shows on people. Another candidate, D Sambasiva Goud said the poor translation also cost Telugu students in the Science Technology paper and Data Interpretation, with errors in three 20mark questions in each of these papers.TRS president K Chandrasekhar Rao's daughter K Kavitha also joined in the protest but was made to wait for nearly three hours before the APPSC chairman gave her statistics she sought. Speaking to newspersons after her meeting APPSC chairperson Rachel Chatterjee and secretary Poonam Malakondaiah, she said the chairman gave her details of centrewise selection of candidates to clear the cloud on allegations of huge number of students being selected from Tirupati.However, Kavitha said the commission had refused to give information on how many who made it to the interviews took the exam in Telugu. The chairman advised her to go to the court or file an RTI petition if she wanted the information.Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad leaders said students had decided to file a public interest litigation to direct the commission to reveal the number of qualified candidates according to medium of instruction.