CBSE biology students asked which is better, burial or cremation?

The teachers and students described the Class 12 CBSE Biology paper as tricky and moderately difficult. However one question about cremation practices in the paper led to people questioning the HRD minister.

The teachers and students described the Class 12 CBSE Biology paper as tricky and moderately difficult. However one question about cremation practices in the paper led to people questioning the HRD minister.

People have raised question over the relevance of the paper. Some of them tagged Union HRD minister Prakash Javadekar on Twitter.(Sunil Ghosh / HT file)

The question under Section D was based on air pollution and asked students to justify with arguments whether one should “bury” or “burn” to control air pollution.

“How is this question relevant to Biology? Does the CBSE wants to promote burial and not burning? They even asked impressionable minds to give reasons in support,” said Alok Bhatt who tagged the question paper to the HRD minister Prakash Javadekar on Twitter.

Teachers, however, said air pollution is a part of the Biology syllabus. They said most questions in the paper were from the NCERT textbook.

A section worth 10 to 12 marks required analysis. Similarly, the value based questions also required analysis by the students. Some questions were repeated from last year’s CBSE paper.

“The paper can be classified as an average one with tricky questions worth at least 10 to 12 marks. If a student had studied comprehensively, she would have answered the 3-mark and 5-mark questions in the paper,” said Shruti Gupta, Biology teacher at Evergreen Senior Secondary School.

Abhishek Yadav, a student of the same school, described the paper as tricky.

“It was mostly based on concepts. There were situational questions where one needed to use one’s application skills,” said Yadav.

Students from other schools also described the paper as moderately difficult.

“Some questions in the paper were tricky and indirect. I would describe the difficulty level of the paper as moderately difficult,” Priyanka Sharma, student of Kendriya Vidyalaya, Gole Market.

There were some students who even said the paper was lengthy.

“I could not complete all the questions and left few of them. I thought this year’s paper was difficult than last year,” said Rohan Raj, a student of Cambridge School.