‘Not dogs, whales make sonic sounds’

The expert committee appointed by the Maharashtra State Council of Examinations has concluded that a ‘dog’ cannot produce infra-sonic sounds but a ‘whale fish’ can, thus allowing a candidate to qualify for the primary shikshan sevak exams.

The committee on Thursday made the oral submission before the Bombay high court while replying to the petition filed by Shrikant Patil who had challenged the model answer key of the council to be having wrong answers to the questions asked. 

The high court has also come to the rescue of several candidates who appear for different exams of the council by directing it to “Establish an authority/forum so as to examine such grievances of individual candidates. In this way the candidate will have one more option to espouse their cause, which is faster and relatively less expensive.”

Patil who had last year appeared for the CET conducted by the council was disqualified as he scored only 145 marks out of the 200 asked in the exam, while the cut-off marks were 146 in open category. Patil later found out that the answers were incorrect in the model answer set, prepared by the council, which lead to his disqualification. Patil and five others who had to face disqualification because of wrong answers approached the HC.

One question asked by the council was: Who can produce infra-sonic sounds? The options were humans, whale, dogs or elephants.