Coimbatore: As many as 39,845 students and 60 prisoners from the district appeared for the class X board examination,
which began on Friday.
The district has 41,235 class X students, of which 33,850 are from the Coimbatore education district and 7,385 from Pollachi. As many as 1,390 students were absent on the first day, education department officials said.
Fifty-four prisoners from the Coimbatore Central Prison and six prisoners from the Salem Central Prison wrote the exam at the central jail. Among them were Sharabuddin, a life convict in the Coimbatore serial blast case, who is serving sentence in the Coimbatore prison and Palanivel, a Maoist serving sentence in Salem prison. The Salem prisoners were brought to the Coimbatore prison, where they will be put up till the exams get over.
A total of 290 differently-abled students were given scribes, language exemption of an extra hour to finish the exam, based on their category of disability, officials said.
The students wrote the first exam, language paper-I, at 108 centres in Coimbatore and 39 centres in Pollachi. A total of 2,450 invigilators and 259 flying squad were put in service for the exams.
Prison officials said a total of 414 prisoners were studying from classes VI to XII in the Coimbatore Central Prison.
