The chemistry paper had been leaked, and the PU Board decides to merrily play around with the student's lives because of their carelessness. Some reasons why this re-exam should not take place 

• Probable time delay in getting the "leaked" paper

They say the Chemistry paper had been leaked an hour before the exam.
That's nearly enough time to get to the exam centre and be seated in your place, because we "are required to be present atleast half an hour before the commencement of the exam." Now, since phones and/or any other form of data storage devices are strictly not allowed in the exam hall, and nobody can really mug up an entire question paper within a timespan of 20 minutes, that too while travelling, my first question is this - How does the leak even matter? Considering the case wherein people did get this information, one hour isn't nearly enough to read up the answers to the questions.

• Secondly, conflicting exam dates and result declarations.

1.75 lakh students wrote the paper. Most of them are writing exams like JEE Mains, VITEEE, etc. which are coming up soon. There is hardly a week's gap in between JEE and the last board paper ( PU kannada on 28th as far as I know and 3rd is the date for JEE offline -- that's 5 days! ) If the Chemistry re-exam is rescheduled in these days, that's little or no time to prepare for one of the most, if not the most competitive exam in India. If it is scheduled sometime in April, that's going to decrease the time required for CET preparation - in which a good performance is crucial for admission into a good college, which is further required for a good placement, etc. This is the question of our future here. If it is kept sometime in May, it will not only clash with certain other exams like BITSAT, etc which are scheduled in late may, it will delay the result. And since karnataka institutions are not the only ones, it will have an effect all over, which, to be honest, is not acceptable. The CBSE students would get their result much earlier.

• Thirdly, it is not our fault - why should we pay the price? 

The leak of the paper was clearly a fault with the security measures by the PU Department - "the second time in five years." My question - since this is clearly not the fault of the students if they happened to get the paper, why should they have to undergo another 3 hour paper for they have to prepare for atleast 2-3 days. Fun fact - these 2-3 days are crucial for us, since our parents and all our teachers have been telling us that "every second is important this year" So why should we waste this time? If someone on the street finds some money lying on the road, and they pick it up and hand it over to the police, should the whole neighborhood be punished because someone there dropped it? This is exactly what is happening - the "source" was a student who got the paper at 7:30 in the morning on the day of the exam. This student could have just seen the paper and not said anything, but they did something responsible - tell the PU department about it. This is going to affect 1.75 lakh people - 1.75 lakh "youth" - who are supposed to be the future of the country. Is this what should happen to them, simply because someone did something responsible and pointed out the PU departments fault?


In conclusion, I say this for all the PU students who appeared for the chemistry exam today - This is a pain for us. Most of us find chemistry hard - writing it again will be highly stressful. It is not in our hands whether you conduct this exam or not, it is not our choice - we have to write it if you do. This is not fair since people not from PU Board - will have an advantage here. The whole point of the whole exam is to test the knowledge of people on an equal stage - and this is exactly the opposite of that. It is our sincere request to you people to not conduct this re-exam for the above mentioned reasons. Alternately, try to think about the fact that a person who has used this chemistry paper will not top the exam just because of one subject. Punishing 1.75 lakh students for your mistake isn't a solution - getting to the root of the cause is. You fired a few teachers? great, good job. You want a re-exam? Not the way to handle this. We would like you to think about it logically, keeping aside your department's public "image", since it is nothing big and the paper have been leaked before, and will continue to be leaked in the future - except if you stop taking such insensible measure and actually do something about it. 

Yours sincerely, 
The students.

<side note for students/parents concerned> what can you do? spam the mail boxes of the government officials - they can ignore a few people, but a few hundred? a few thousand? make this big, and they'll be forced to take action which does not involve a re-exam