The West Bengal Board of Secondary Education on Monday barred three students of the ongoing Madhyamik (Class X) state board examination allegedly for bringing mobiles inside exam hall and attempting to click images of today’s history question paper and circulating them on WhatsApp. 

 

The three candidates are all from Malda district in North Bengal. One of them had allegedly clicked the images of the question paper covering their QR codes in order to evade detection.

 

The board was able to track the errant student despite they blurred the QR codes, board officials said.Board president, Ramanuj Ganguly, who visited several exam venues today, said that the board has barred the exam further for three candidates today. But he was not in a position to confirm exactly on what grounds, they had been barred from today’s exam and how many student were found violating the board rules.

 

The board started an investigation and the officials will be able to confirm the figures  and the reason for barring the candidates from the exam further, after the investigation.

 

Ganguly said the board had stopped allowing students from entering the exam halls with mobiles, several years ago. “We are barring students from writing the exam further not just for clicking images of question paper and circulating them on WhatsApp. But we are not allowing them to write the exam further also if they are caught with mobile phones inside the exam hall. We are determined to bring back the sanctity of the exam,” Ganguly told EducationWorld after the exam.

 

The Madhyamik examination began on February 2. Altogether 17 candidates were barred from the Class X board exam further since February 4, the day the 2024 Madhyamik exam started.

 

Of the 17 candidates caught so far for clicking the images of question paper and circulating on WhatsApp, 12 are from Malda district, board officials said.

 

Board president Ganguly reiterated that the board suspects that the malpractice is taking place because a conspiracy was at play and a section of people (not student) were indulging this to malign the board.

 

Earlier, on Saturday after the end of the second day of the exam, the board had said that the matter was being investigated by the police. Preliminary investigations had revealed that an organized racket was involved in helping the students to leaking the images of the question paper on social media.

 

Over the past few years, Madhyamik question papers have been circulated on social media within minutes of the start of the examination leaked from different venues. The board this year introduced QR codes to stop the malpractice.  The board had expected that the new measure would act as deterrent, Ganguly said.