HC orders hall tickets for students denied entry due to glitch

Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court Single Bench presided over by Justice EV Venugopal on Monday directed the Secretary of the Telangana State Board of Intermediate Education to forthwith issue hall tickets to all students, who had been denied admission to the ongoing Intermediate Public Examinations, 2026, notwithstanding their having duly remitted the requisite fees to their respective institutions.

The court was seized of a batch of writ petitions filed by aggrieved intermediate students challenging the decision of the Intermediate Board to bar them from appearing in the examinations.

The petitioners had contended that they could not be penalised for a failure that was entirely attributable to their institutions and not to any default on their part, having fulfilled their obligation of paying the prescribed fees in full.

It emerged before the court that owing to a technical glitch in the fee remittance system between the institutions and the Intermediate Board, the fees collected from the students had not been transmitted to the Board, which consequently withheld issuance of the hall tickets. The petitioners' counsel urged that students ought not to be deprived of the opportunity to sit for their examinations for no fault of theirs.

Justice Venugopal, while passing the directions, observed that errors on the part of the colleges should not deprive students of their right to appear for the examination. The court accordingly directed the Intermediate Board to issue the hall tickets and further ordered the Board to facilitate special practical examinations for the affected students at a later date, given that they had been unable to appear for the regular practicals as a consequence of the same dispute. The matter has been adjourned to March 26 for further consideration.