E-Paper
58 lakh students likely to take UP Board exams beginning today
With the UP Board examinations all set to begin Thursday, the state secondary education department faces a major challenge to ensure that no question paper leaks take place
With the UP Board examinations all set to begin Thursday, the state secondary education department faces a major challenge to ensure that no question paper leaks take place. The Special Task Force (STF) has been roped in to ensure the fairness of the exam, which will be taken by around 58 lakh students, an official said.
Last year, the government had a major embarrassment when the class 12 English language exam was cancelled in 24 districts after the question paper was leaked in Ballia district of eastern Uttar Pradesh hours before the exam was scheduled to begin. The cancellation affected 5.25 lakh examinees as the exam was rescheduled for April.
Out of 8,753 examination centres (established at 540 government institutions, and 3,523 private and 4,690 unaided colleges) set up this year, 936 have been identified as sensitive while another 242 centres have been declared highly-sensitive by the board.
Out of the 58,85,745 students (31,16,487 of class 10 and 27,69,258 of class 12) who have registered for the high school and Intermediate examinations, 32,46,780 are boys and young men while 26,38,965 others are girls and young women, said UP Board secretary Divyakant Shukla. As many as 170 candidates are prison inmates.
To conduct the exams in a free and fair manner, 1,390 sector magistrates, 455 zonal magistrates, 521 mobile teams and 75 state-level supervisory officers have been appointed for inspection and supervision of examination centres, board officials aware of the matter said.
To ensure copying does not take place, CCTV cameras, with three lakh voice recorders, have been installed in examination rooms of all 8,753 examination centres across the state. “Arrangements for DVR (digital voice recorders), routers and high-speed internet connections have also been made,” the officials added.
Both class 10 and 12 examinations will start February 16. While the high school exams will conclude on March 3, the intermediate exams will get over a day later.
A total of 16 districts, including Ballia, Azamgarh, Mau, Ghazipur, Chandauli, Jaunpur, Deoria, Gonda, Mathura, Aligarh, Mainpuri, Etah, Baghpat, Hardoi, Prayagraj and Kaushambi, have been identified as sensitive districts.
Besides, the STF of UP Police and local intelligence units (LIUs) have also been roped in for the monitoring of sensitive and highly-sensitive examination centres.
Also, strong rooms have been set up for the first time and question papers are kept in double-locked almirahs.
Stitched answer sheets
For total fairness and security of answer sheets, stitched answer sheets will be given to the candidates. Along with this, QR code and the board’s logo have also been printed on all numbered and four-colour printed answer sheets this year, officials said.
OMR sheets
In a first, candidates appearing for the class 10 examination will have to answer multiple choice questions (MCQs) of 20 marks on OMR sheets.
