BHUBANESWAR: In an unprecedented incident of sorts, the Board of Secondary Education cancelled the High School Certificate (HSC) Examination in regular stream across the State on Wednesday hours after miscreants broke into a school in Puri’s Kakatpur and made away with question papers.The incident, which has come as a shock for both the students and the Board, took place at Bhagabati Vidyapeetha where unidentified miscreants made their way into the headmaster’s chamber and decamped with the question papers.On Wednesday, the students had appeared for English paper, but the examination stood cancelled too. The HSC examination began on Monday and students had appeared for Odia on the first day. Examination for subjects such as Hindi/Sanskrit, mathematics, science, history and geography were scheduled to be held subsequently.“We will re-frame question papers afresh and announce fresh schedule of the regular examination in a couple of days,” Board president Satyakam Mishra said. However, examination for the ex-regular stream will continue as usual.Fresh examination could start only after 20-25 days which will push the entire process way behind schedule. Given that tests will start mid-April, students will be subjected to a gruelling summer. That’s not all. Publication of results, which takes at least 60 days after the exams are over, will be delayed further. This will create problems for those students who would be appearing for various all-India entrance tests.Besides, the theft will impose huge financial burden on the Board as it has to carry out the whole exercise __ framing of new question papers for all subjects, barring Odia, transportation to individual centres and holding the tests __ all over again.As per the existing examination process, question paper sets (for all subjects) directly reach the centres ahead of the test. A theft poses risk of leakage of the question papers across the State. Meanwhile, the Board has registered an FIR with the local police station. The centre superintendent has been placed under suspension with immediate effect. He will also face criminal proceedings.As many as 5,11,443 students, including 4.67 lakh in regular and 38,613 in ex-regular streams, are appearing for the examination across 2,384 centres in the State. On the first day, the Board had booked 582 candidates for malpractice.
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