E-Paper
U.P. Board exams-2023: In a first, examinees to get stitched answer sheets
The decision has been taken after the board’s experiment to provide stitched answer sheets to 10 sensitive districts, where such practices were feared in 2020, yielded desired results
In a first, over 58 lakh students registered to appear in U.P. Board high school and intermediate examinations 2023 across the state will get stitched answer sheets. The move of the Uttar Pradesh Madhyamik Shiksha Parishad (UPMSP), commonly known as U.P. Board, is aimed at preventing the copy mafia from deliberately changing answer sheets of meritorious students at different exam centres as witnessed in earlier years’ exams for vested interests, said state secondary education department officials aware of the move.
The decision has been taken after the board’s experiment to provide stitched answer sheets to 10 sensitive districts, where such practices were feared in 2020, yielded desired results. A total of 58,67,329 students, including 31,16,458 of high school and 27,50,871 of intermediate, are to write the 2023 U.P. Board exams.
The step is also aimed at further making examinations free of unfair means, they add. In the earlier examinations, the copying mafia used to take out the cover page of the usual stapled answer sheets of meritorious students at the centres and put it on the copies of the weaker students in lieu of cash after the examination was over.
In many such cases, the U.P. Board has in the past taken action against centre managers and teachers besides debarring the guilty schools from the examination over these very incidents. “To prevent this, U.P. Board had started providing stitched answer sheets to select districts where such practices were feared in 2020 by sending stitched answer sheets to 10 sensitive districts of Mathura, Prayagraj, Muzaffarnagar, Hardoi, Ballia, Jaunpur, Azamgarh, Aligarh, Ghazipur and Kaushambi. This continued in 2021 and 2022 as well,” said a senior U.P. Board official requesting anonymity as no official is authorised to comment on confidential matters related to the exams.
“On getting its positive results, this year the Board has requested officers of the Government Press that only sewed copies be supplied to all 75 districts,” he added. “Starting the process, the Government Press had issued tenders for this as per different regional offices of U.P. Board. However, when it emerged that this could lead to the tenders being awarded at different prices for the same task and, in turn, lead to audit objections in future, a decision has been taken to issue a single tender at the earliest for stitched answer sheets,” said another senior UP Board official.
As a result, examinees of 2023 U.P. Board exams would not only be getting stitched answer sheets as “Copy-A” but even supplementary answer sheets as “Copy-B” will also be given in stitched forms. For the proposed class 10 and class 12 examination to be held in March 2023, the board exam answer sheets are expected to be sent to the districts from December 2022 itself.
