Hyderabad,  The Telangana government on Friday decided to pass all students who failed in the intermediate first year (11th class) examinations.

Education Minister P. Sabitha Indra Reddy announced that keeping in view the students' future, the government decided to pass all the failed students with minimum passing marks.

The decision will benefit over 2.35 lakh students who had failed in the exams, results of which were declared last week.

The decision came amid the continuing protests by student groups and opposition parties over the alleged irregularities in evaluation of answer sheets and suicide of at least six students over their failure in the examination.

The Telangana State Board of Intermediate Education (TSBIE) had conducted the exams for the first year from October 25 to November 3. A total of 4,59,242 students had appeared in the exams (both general and vocational courses) and only 49 per cent (2,24,012) students passed the exams.

Student groups, backed by opposition parties, had been staging protests at the TSBIE office for the past week, demanding that the government declare all students pass. They alleged that the bungling by the TSBIE led to suicide of students.

Congress leader T. Jagga Reddy had threatened to lay siege to the TSBIE office with 10,000 students on December 28.

The Education Minister, however, dismissed the allegation that there were irregularities in conducting the exams or in evaluation of answer sheets. She pointed out that over 4.5 lakh students had written the exams and out of 49 per cent students who passed the exams, 10,000 had scored 95 per cent marks.

Sabitha Indra Reddy termed the protests at TSBIE office as unfortunate. She said the opposition parties should keep the politics aside and think about the future of students.

She said the exams were conducted for the betterment of students and in the interest of their future as intermediate first year is very crucial for further studies.

The minister said the students were given one month's time and online classes were conducted for them through T-SAT and Doordarshan.

She advised students to work hard and score good marks in the intermediate second year. She asked them not to think that if they protest, they will be declared passed in the second year too.

The annual intermediate examinations could not be conducted in March-April this year due to Covid-19 situation and all the students of first year were promoted to second year. However, the government decided to conduct the exams in October-November.

The students had opposed the move and questioned the rationale behind as they were already promoted to the second year.

The government, however, had defended its decision. It pointed out that these students had not written the Class 10 exams as the same could not be conducted last year due to the pandemic. It argued that in case the exams are not conducted for second year due to the same situation, there will be no method to evaluate them and this will affect their academic future.