Bengaluru, Nov 13 (IANS): More than 100 students of Visvesvaraya Technical University (VTU) sat on a hunger strike on Saturday alleging a cock-up in the checking of their papers by the examiners, resulting in an unusual number of students failing.

The students demanded that those failed be advanced to the next year since there was a major mistake made during the checking of the paper across courses during July semester.

"Close to half of the total 4.5 lakh students here across all courses were failed. Many of those who had got marks in single digits, ended up scoring 65 or even more upon re-evaluation of the marks," Manan, a National Students Union of India (NSUI) member told IANS.

"Since this is a screw-up on the university's part, for which students are forced to shell out Rs 700-1000 in each paper's re-evaluation, the least they can do is let students advance to the next year," he said.

However, VTU Registrar, H. N. Jagannath Reddy said there's nothing unusual in the number of students who have failed and the authorities will call a meeting and address the students' concerns.

"The number (of students who failed at least one exam) is far lesser than what the students are saying. It's no more than the annual average of the University, nothing unusual in the number of applications for re-evaluation either," Reddy told IANS.

"There may have been some human error or even technical error during checking. Every year about 17 per cent of total papers come for re-evaluation, this number is same for July semester as well. We appeal all the students to call-off their strike," Reddy added.