It's official. The Andhra Pradesh Intermediate public exams will be held a week behind schedule - from March 10, 2010.
Acceding to pressure ostensibly from students - but mostly from political opponents represented by Telangana ministers Jupalli Krishna Rao, Komatireddy Venkatreddy and Sridhar Babu, for whom it had reportedly become an ego issue - the minister for secondary education Manikya Vara Prasad reluctantly postponed the exams by a week.
Intermediate Practical exams will be held according to schedule, and so will the SSC (10th class) exams.
The past 3 days have seen a tug of war between the minister, who represents Tadikonda (Guntur district, Andhra region) as MLA, and the Telangana ministers over the issue of postponing the exams since students have lost several days of classes due to the Telangana agitation of December and January.
The Minister was bent upon holding the exams on schedule, citing the fact that students need enough time after that to prepare for the IIT-JEE and the AIEEE. The other ministers however kept piling on the pressure, and in the end Vara Prasad had to blink.
TV channels reported that most students were keen that the exams be held according to schedule. With more than a month to go, they had enough time to prepare, and anyone who's been a student knows that a huge majority of students study for lesser time that that anyway for their exams.
Plus, students keen on succeeding in the engineering and other entrances are anyway unlikely to have participated in any agitation - in fact, they are likely to have thanked their stars at the extra time the closure of colleges in that period gave them.
Thus, it would appear that this was more a battle of egos than a genuine concern for students.
filed in:Intermediate Exams, D Manikya Vara Prasad Rao, Telangana