The West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Examinations on Friday barred three examinees from writing this year’s Higher Secondary (state board Class XII) examinations for entering exam halls with mobile phones, Chiranjib Bhattachrjee, the president of the council said. Today was the first day of this year’s Class XII board exam.

 

Two examinees were caught from a centre in North 24 Parganas district  when they were trying to click images of the question paper of today’s test allegedly for circulating them on WhatsApp. Another candidate was caught from a school in Asansol in West Burdwan district with a mobile phone inside the hall who was also barred from writing the exam further.

 

The council cancelled the tests for all the three examinees within an hour after the exam began at 9.45 am today. ” Two examinees have been barred from writing this year’s exam for using mobile phone inside the exam hall. The examination of another candidate was also cancelled for bringjng mobile phone inside the hall. But, by and large, today’s paper was conducted peacefully in the entire state,” Bhattacharjee said.

The 2024 Higher Secondary examination which began today will continue till February 29. Nearly 7.9 lakh students are writing the exam this year.

 

The council had banned use of mobile phones inside exam several years ago. But over the past few years an increasing trend was noticed among Class X and XII state board exam candidates to violate the ban with the intention to click images of question papers when the exam is in progress and circulate them on WhatsApp.

 

The state secondary board, which conducts the Class X exam and the higher secondary council that conducts the Class XII test introduced unique QR codes printed on each question paper this year. This new system was introduced to enable  the boards to track the examinee who click the image of the paper for circulating them in social media.

 

However, despite introducing the new system, as many as 36 candidates of the 2024 Class X exam were barred from writing this year’s exam for circulating images of question papers on WhatsApp and entering the exam halls with mobile phones. “After noticing the trend in the Madhyamik exam, we decided to tighten the vigil on examinees to ensure that they were not entering the exam halls with mobile phones. The intense vigil helped us to prevent the malpractice,” a senior official of the council said.

 

Bhattacharjee said that from next year the council will mention the name and address of the exam centres of the candidates where they will write the test, on the admit cards of students so that they so that they do not have any problem to reach the centres.