UP Board exams begin with hitch in Bareilly

BAREILLY: More than 6,000 students could not attend the board exams in Bareilly district on the first day as several reportedly did not get their admit cards in time. Lack of co-ordination was evident between the education department and examination centers as several examiners also failed to turn up for duty.
Students of some schools alleged that sums as high as Rs 5,000 were being asked from them by schools to hand over their admit cards.With examiners from the Basic Shiksha Adhikari department skipping invigilation duties, the beginning of board exams were anything but smooth in Bareilly.
District inspector of schools, Ashutosh Bharadwaj, said, “We had asked for about 2,500 teachers from higher secondary schools and about the same number from Basic Shiksha Adhikari department to come for invigilation duties. However, reports from several exam halls in the district revealed that invigilators from BSA failed to turn up for duty, forcing the exam centre i.e. schools to deploy their own staff.”
He added that BSA had been asked to relieve teachers so that they could invigilate exams. “BSA has to look into this issue and sort it out,” Bharadwaj said.
A total of 1, 05,505 students are scheduled to appear in board examinations from the district. Of these, 57,875 students are enrolled in Class X and 47,630 are to appear for Class XII exams. As many 56,908 students appeared in the examination from Bareilly district in the morning shift at 126 centres in the city and rural areas. Two exam centres were reportedly added to the list of exam centres on Wednesday.
Long queues of students were seen outside examination centers as teachers checked them thoroughly, asking them to even remove their shoes so that they are not able to sneak in with any sort of cheating material. Special checking squads comprising DIOS, ADIOS, Basic Siksha Adhikari and others conducted random checking at various examination centers in the district. However, no incident of cheating came to light, education officials said.
Talking to TOI, principal of Sahu Gopinath Kanya Inter College Meera Priyadershani said, “Barring few, a majority of teachers turned up for examination duties in the morning shift and the situation remained the same in the second shift too. We will be sending a report to DIOS and Basic Siksha Adhikari (BSA) office so that teachers who remained absent from duty today turn up the next time.”
Basic Siksha Adhikari (BSA) Devendra Sachan was unavailable for comment.
Meanwhile, a majority of examination coordinators, principal and others complained about a large number of students not carrying their registration numbers to the examination centers across the district.
In several incidents, where students turned up for the exam hall without their registration numbers, the exam coordinators had to give them special permission to write the exam. They were, however, given a warning to bring their registration numbers in the next exam, failing which, they would be barred from writing remaining papers, claimed coordinators.
On the other hand, several students alleged that their school handed them their admit cards after they had paid extra money for it. A student from SM girls higher school and a few others, seeking anonymity, claimed that the school administration had taken extra money from students for giving them admit cards.
Interestingly, education officials said so far none of the students had officially lodged any complaint with them, so they were not aware of the fact.