I am Rahila Sham, a Bachelor of Arts (BA) student from Islamabad. I enrolled for my BA (Roll No 1111981) through the Islamabad Model College for Girls F-7/4, and have been an exemplary student all my academic life with first divisions in both matric and intermediate. I had never failed a single exam in my life, until the Quaid-i-Azam University announced the results of my BA exam in Dec 2014.

According to the notified result, I received zero marks in Education and failed both English and Political Science with 34 and 38 marks, respectively. This shocked me and my family, as well as my teachers, who convinced me to apply for rechecking.

This paid off, and the university was forced to acknowledge their mistake when, after my Education paper was rechecked, I was awarded 62 marks. This new result is a clear admission on the part of the university administration that they made a grave error in issuing the original result.

I am not the only student with discrepancies in their results. Several other students from my college have received erroneous results. But my ordeal is still not over.

I have yet to receive the rechecked results for my two other subjects, even though I applied for rechecking all three subjects at the same time. How can the university toy with students’ future in this way?

(Dawn contacted a number of individuals to verify Ms Sham’s claims. A teacher at a government-run degree college in Sector H-8 confirmed that the day after the BA results were announced, the examination branch was flooded with complaints from students with discrepancies in their results.

Quaid-i-Azam University Controller Examinations Sardar Babar Mumtaz denied the claims of mass discrepancies in exam results, but said that if there were any issues, they had been rectified during rechecking. He also claimed that no rechecking jobs were pending with the university and denied any direct knowledge of Ms Sham’s case).

Dawn’s ‘Eye-Witness Account’ segment features accounts of individuals who have experienced adversity or have been affected by a miscarriage of justice. All accounts are verified as far as possible by Dawn’s editorial team. Readers are encouraged to send in accounts of similar incidents that may have befallen them, so that attention can be called to such problems and they can be addressed with due debate in the public eye. Readers can send their accounts to re.isb@dawn.com

Published in Dawn February 18th , 2015

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