Hundreds of students marched to the ICAI Headquarters in New Delhi to protest against the discrepancies in the evaluation process. The students alleged discrepancies in the August results and demanded a re-evaluation of the paper, reported news agency PTI.
To note, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) holds examinations two times a year – May and November. The protest is for the test conducted in May, results of which were declared in August. Several students filed RTI queries to get their answer sheets.
Several inconsistencies were found by the students themselves when they compared their answers with the ICAI model answer keys. An ICAI member and Chartered accountant Neeraj Arora said that many candidates found that their correct answers had been marked wrong resulting in many students failing the exam.
A candidate who appeared for the exams, Amrita Nath, rued the discrepancies she found while comparing her answer sheets. “There are many discrepancies in the mark sheets, and the answer sheets were not properly evaluated. In the paper-IV (Taxation), the ICAI gave me 2.5, though I correctly answered the questions. In another paper VI, I was awarded 1 and 5.5 respectively for the correct answers,” Nath told the Indian Express.
On Tuesday, the hashtag ‘dearicaipleasechange’ gained traction on Twitter. Several students took to Twitter to share images of their papers along with the marks awarded by ICAI.
Entire issue explained! RTs needed. #dearicaipleasechange https://t.co/OPxjdlxC08
— neerajaroraofficial (@canacofficial) September 24, 2019
#dearicaipleasechange @canacofficial when this checkers teacher told him in childhood that beta 01 001 0001 00001 i.e 1k peeche jitne 0lga do frk nhi pdta this man took the same logic for 41also…thought jb 1k peeche 50zero lgane se frk nhi pd rha to 41 ka 14krne se kya pdega https://t.co/NtwJGBhoA9
— Mandeep Singh (@Mandeep88663045) September 24, 2019
Clear cut false evaluation in my paper marks not awarded for answers as per icai suggested answers@canacofficial@caparveensharma @BhanwarBorana #dearicaipleasechange pic.twitter.com/dOQupRPrPn
— Lohith Kumar Melkote (@lohithkmr94) September 24, 2019
Taking note of the students’ protests, ICAI had to issue a clarification on the evaluation system on September 21 on its website, listing the reforms being implemented. It said that the scripts will be checked digitally to prevent discrepancies in marks and eliminate mistakes.
It added that for the Intermediate and Foundation level exams being held in November 2019 and May 2020, the institute will discard physical handling of answer books and instead have them digitally evaluated.