CUTTACK: The annual High School Certificate Examination-2020, which concluded on Monday, registered a decline in the number of examinees booked for malpractice. A total of 829 matriculation examinees were booked for cheating this year against 1,133 caught during the examination in 2019.
The decline in the number of examinees booked for adopting unfair means in the examination is the outcome of strict vigilance measures adopted by the authorities concerned.
“All the examinations were incident-free. Tight security arrangements were made at all the 2,888 examination centres as a precautionary measure for conducting the examination in a free and fair manner,” said the president of Board of Secondary Education, Ramashis Hazra.
Meanwhile, elaborate arrangements have been made for error-free evaluation of matriculation answer sheets scheduled to start from March 18 at 61 centres across the state. More than 15,000 teachers will be involved in the evaluation process.
Informing about the arrangements, Hazra said the evaluation process, which is generally completed in 10 to 12 days, is likely to take more time this year due to change in examination patterns like the abolition of Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) answer sheet and introduction of short questions.
“We have put elaborate measures in place to ensure an error-free evaluation process expected to be completed within 20 days,” said Hazra.