UP Board to give stitched answer sheets in all districts from 2023

Prayagraj: UP Board will provide stitched answer sheets to all the centres in 75 districts of the state for students appearing for classes 10 and 12 board exams from 2023 in place of the stapled one.
The decision will help in clipping the wings of copying mafia who often used to change the cover page of the answer sheets of meritorious students with the weak students as being stapled they were easy to be removed.
A lot of complaints were lodged by parents of meritorious students. Following this, the board, since the 2020 had started sending stitched answer books in ten sensitive districts. These included Mathura, Prayagraj, Muzaffarnagar, Hardoi, Ballia, Jaunpur, Azamgarh, Aligarh, Ghazipur and Kaushambi. Besides, the board has in the past taken action against centre managers and teachers along with debarring the guilty schools from the examination over these incidents.
The move is aimed at further making the examinations free of unfair means.
Sources said the board has requested officers of Government Press that only sewed copies be supplied to all 75 districts. The Government Press had issued tenders for this as per different regional offices of the board. However, when it emerged that this could lead to the tenders being awarded at different prices for the same task and in turn lead to audit objections in future, a decision has been taken to issue a single tender at the earliest for stitched answer sheets, informed the source.
Not only the main answer sheet (A copy) but even the supplementary answer sheets (B copy) will also be stitched. For 2023 exams, a total of 31,16,458 students have been registered for class 10 and 27,50,871 for class 12.