Odisha BSE worried over safety of question papers

Cuttack: Working on war-footing to ensure smooth conduct of the scheduled High School Certificate (HSC) supplementary examinations this month, the safety of question papers at examination centres continues to haunt Odisha's Board of Secondary Education (BSE) authorities.

The supplementary examinations are slated to begin on September 11 and shall continue till September 24.

A little less than 55,000 regular students and around 12,000 ex-regular students are going to write the examinations in at least 277 examination centres spread across the state, BSE sources said.

It may be recalled that the Annual HSC examination in March-April this year was mired in controversy when some question papers were found stolen from an examination centre just a day after the examinations commenced. This forced the authorities to suspend the examination which was later rescheduled after a month thereby forcing some 4.5 lakh examinees to go through tumultuous times.

"We are going to implement all the safety measures taken during the rescheduled annual examinations to ensure that the question papers are kept safely at examination centers," informed the BSE president Satyakam Mishra.

It has been again proposed that the civil administration at district level would be given the responsibilities to keep the Supplementary questions safe under their custody. The help of district collectors and superintendents of police would be taken in this regard so that the shocking incident of annual examination does not return to haunt again, Mishra said.

BSE has also decided to bank on nodal offices to keep the question safely under direct supervision of nodal officers. The nodal offices in turn, would be asked to supply the question papers in each centre under its supervision with police escort as was done during the rescueduled annual examinations in April this year.