KOLKATA/MALDA: The West Bengal Board of Secondary Education has ordered a probe and issued a corrigendum on its website after the Madhyamik model test papers for 2022-23 had a question asking students to point out "Azad Kashmir" on the Indian map. The same question also had "Chattagram" among the four options.
The model test papers are a guide for students appearing for state boards, Madhyamik examination, which starts on February 23. The Board does not frame questions in this model test papers but gleans through them set by schools for their pre-board examinations and publishes them for students to practise.
Secondary Board president Ramanuj Ganguly said, "We will upload a rectification on our website. The test papers have already been distributed and sent out to individual schools. We will also probe to identify the teacher and school who framed this particular question, those who edited it (in the model test papers) and act as per our statutes."
Late evening, the Board published a corrigendum on its website referring to the "inadvertent error" in the history test paper page 132. It said the map-point option should read "Kashmir" and not "Azad Kashmir". It said any such reference to "Azad Kashmir" was being dropped from the test papers.
The school, which framed this question, is a reputable school in Malda. Swami Tapaharananda, headmaster of Ramkrishna Mission Vivekananda Vidyamandir, said, "We never tried to distort or politicise history. A fact, written in the text book, was put in a question paper for the students."
The Board has already dispatched nine lakh model test papers to 150 schools. In page 132, there is a question asking to point out on the Indian map three places - Azad Kashmir, Chattagram, Moplah rebellion and the place of occurrence of Satyagraha movement.
Union minister of state for education Subhas Sarkar said, "I urge the state education minister to look into the issue. In case it is found to be true, appropriate action should be taken against the publisher and paper setter. The test paper should be immediately withdrawn, and the question deleted."
TMC spokesperson Kunal Ghosh said: "If someone has set such a question, he has done the wrong thing. We don't support such acts."