‘Andhra Education Minister must resign’: demands TDP after class 10 exam paper leak

The TDP in Andhra Pradesh has demanded the resignation of the state’s Education Minister, Botsa Satyanarayana after a class 10 paper was purportedly discovered in WhatsApp groups of YSRCP leaders. In this case, police have detained 12 people so far, including nine teachers.

The TDP leader K Atchnnaidu said in a statement, ‘The ruling Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP) remained silent spectators while the 10th class exam papers were getting leaked. They were playing dangerous games with the lives of lakhs of students. Why was the Chief Minister not speaking on the leakage issue?’

Atchannaidu further chastised the Chief Minister for damaging education and other sectors with his policies and for failing to prevent paper leakage. He said the arrest of the instructors in the case was ‘atrocious’.

However, the headmaster of a government school in Andhra Pradesh’s Sri Sathya Sai district was detained in the case, bringing the total number of instructors arrested in the case to ten. It was initially discovered that he transmitted the English question paper to a WhatsApp group. According to the police, he took photographs of the question paper and forwarded them to Srinivas Rao, a junior assistant at the MPDO office in Nalla Cheruvu, who then shared the paper on a WhatsApp group.

Atchannaidu also took a swipe at Chief Minister Jagan Reddy, claiming that he had a dubious history of stealing class 10 exam papers. ‘His party gangs had taken him as an example and started leaking question papers. In the past, GMC Balayogi resigned following allegations of paper leakage during his term as Education Minister’, Atchannaidu said.

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As per Atchannaidu, Botsa Satyanarayana was unaware of the breach and did not respond when the leaked papers were sold on the market. ‘There was no action despite evidence available for this’, the TDP leader said and urged that the minister resign immediately so that an independent probe into the document leak scandal could be conducted.