Bihar board’s Class 12 exams: 53 per cent students pass; NEET topper Kalpana tops science stream

PATNA: The results of class-12 examinations conducted by Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) showed improvements this year as 52.95 per cent students passed while the figure stood at a measly 35 per cent last year.

Girls topped in all the three streams. Kalpana Kumari of Sheohar district, the national topper in NEET this year, emerged as the topper in the science stream by scoring 434 marks out of the total 500, said BSEB chairman Anand Kishor while announcing the results on Wednesday.

In the arts stream, 61.32 per cent students passed while in the commerce and science streams the figures are 91.32 per cent and 44.7 per cent respectively. Last year, only 30.11 per cent students had passed in the science stream while the pass percentage in the arts and commerce streams stood at 37.13 and 73.76.

Nidhi Sinha, a student of RDS College in Muzaffarpur district, topped the commerce stream with 434 marks while Kusum Kumari, a student of Simultala Residential School in Jamui district, topped the arts stream with 424 marks, said officials.

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar congratulated the toppers. As per the state government’s policy, the topper from each stream will be given a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh along with a laptop and a kindle e-reader. A cash prize of Rs 75,000 each will be given to the second topper of each stream while the three third toppers will get Rs 50,000 each.

As many as 11.92 lakh students had appeared for the Class 12 examinations in the state this year, and 40.28 per cent of them were girls. As many as 92,726 (7.78 per cent) students secured first division while 4,38,738 (36.81 per cent) secured second division and 99,395 (8.34 per cent) third division.

“It is a matter of satisfaction that the results this year have shown improvements. We are trying our best to improve the standards of education in the state,” said Bihar education minister Krishnanandan Prasad Verma, who was accompanied by the department’s principal secretary RK Mahajan as the results were announced.

BSEB had introduced a system of physical verification of the toppers this year to avoid the embarrassment it faced in the past two years. Ganesh Ram, who was declared the topper in the arts stream last year, was found to have fudged his age. Similarly, Ruby Rai, who was declared the arts stream topper in 2016, had failed to answer simple and basic questions related to her subjects.

Sources said the top 100 students from the three streams were called for a verification of their knowledge in interactions with subject and stream experts.