The Board of Secondary Education (BSE), which conducts High School Certificate (Matriculation) Examinations, on Friday suspended four Centre Superintendents and four Invigilators for their alleged role in spreading images of the first day’s question paper on social media. The examinations began from Friday and will continue till March 8.
“FIRs in this connection will be lodged in order to initiate criminal proceedings against the erring Centre Superintendents and Invigilators,” said BSE President Jahan Ara Begum.
All of them are either headmasters or masters of different schools in Nuapada, Koraput and Dhenkanal districts, BSE sources said, adding that the examinations would not be cancelled.
Earlier in the day, as the examination began at 10 am, images of the question papers went viral on the social media. Reacting to the development, the BSE President said some insiders might have taken the images of the question papers on their mobile phones and shared them on the social media to create rumors of question leak.
“Technically, this is not question paper leak as the examinees only saw these images after the day’s examination was over,” Begum said. She further disclosed that the BSE this time had taken the help of certain secret security measures by which the examination center can be identified from where the images of the question paper had been taken.
Notably, the BSE had also faced similar situation in the 2018 Matriculation examination when images of the question papers went viral on the social media within half-an-hour into the examinations almost on all the days. Although these mischievous activities did not affect the fairness of the examination, the BSE, nevertheless, had faced a lot of criticism.