An agitation by first-year students of colleges affiliated with Himachal Pradesh University (HPU) over poor results has resulted in the pass percentage increasing by 4.38 percentage points following a re-evaluation. 

The low pass percentage of 31 points in BSc, 57 in BA and 58 in BCom first year led to an agitation by the students who held the "faulty" online evaluation system responsible, according to a report by PTI. Over 42,000 students appeared in the examination in these courses in May-June this year and the results were declared in November. Representatives from the Students Federation of India (SFI) and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad (ABVP) alleged that a snag in the online system resulted in a low pass percentage. A five-member fact-finding committee was constituted by the Pro Vice-Chancellor in November to look into the matter and find the gaps.

Following protests by students, about 300 papers were re-checked randomly to analyse the functioning of the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) online system and it was found that all the papers were properly scanned and marked, Chandel said. The committee then decided to check about 3,300 random papers from colleges where the pass percentage was less than 10 and later sent these papers for a third-party evaluation.

A variation of 4.38 percentage points has been found in the pass results of the first and third evaluations which is a minor deviation, reported PTI. According to Dean of Studies Kulbhushan Chandel this implies that the result has improved marginally as over 4.38% of students have passed the third-party evaluation in addition to the previous result. Chandel is also the chairman of the fact-finding committee.

The report pointed out that students fared badly in Environmental Science and language papers and five grace marks would be given to the students in Environmental Science as there was no subject teacher in the majority of the colleges, he told PTI.