Assam goverment will do post-mortem of Class X board paper leak: Minister Ranoj Pegu

GUWAHATI: Assam education minister Ranoj Pegu on Thursday informed the assembly that the state government will do a “post-mortem” of the Class X board exam question paper leak and put in place a “foolproof” system for distribution of papers to schools to prevent such incidents in future.
He maintained that the Board of Secondary Education, Assam, (SEBA), which conducts the Class X exams, is not to be blamed for the paper leak, as it was a “teacher who did it”.
The minister was replying to a discussion on ‘HSCL exam anomalies', moved by leader of opposition Debabrata Saikia of the Congress on the last day of the assembly's budget session.
Following the question paper leak, the board rescheduled the exams of general science, modern Indian languages and English exams last month.
“The SEBA follows a flawless question paper setting procedure. The printed question paper sets are delivered in sealed bundles to its office here, from where these are dispatched to different police stations. Once the bundles reach the police stations, it becomes the responsibility of the police and the exam centre in-charges to ensure that no tampering takes place. SEBA cannot be blamed in this instance,” Pegu said.
While accepting that there were problems in the question paper distribution process as evident from this year’s case, he said, “It becomes difficult when teachers get involved in such acts. We will take steps to ensure a foolproof question paper distribution system,” he said.
“We will do a post-mortem of the case and take steps to correct all loopholes,” the minister added. He said that there have been 70 cases of question paper leak in the country in the last 10 years. “This year’s incident has been the only one in our state,” he said. Several people have been arrested by the CID, which is investigating the case, with two teachers, identified as the masterminds, also in police net.