Bihar 10th Board answer sheets recovered; court asks Bihar Govt. to submit explanation

New Delhi, June 26: Thousands of Class 10 state board exam answer sheets were recovered from a scrap dealer in Bihar, raising serious doubts on the evaluation process and the overall exam procedure. The recovery, which according to media reports is of more than 42,000 answer sheets, also prompted Patna High Court to ask the state government to submit an explanation on the issue within a month.

A Special Investigation Team (SIT) of Bihar Police had earlier recovered a bag containing 42,500 answer sheets of Bihar Board 10th class from a scrap dealer. As per various media reports, these answer sheets of class 10 students were sold to a scrapper a week ago by a peon of SS Balika Inter School in Gopalaganj.

The incident came into light when a complaint pertaining to the misplacement of the answer sheets post evaluation was registered by Pramod Kumar Srivastava, principal of SS Girls' Senior Secondary High School. The principal found the answer sheets missing when an inspection team reached to verify the answer sheets of students who topped the examination. The complaint was filed after the principal of the school was detained and interrogated on the missing answer sheets.

After interrogation, the police raided the scrap shop and recovered a few bags containing all the 42,500 answer sheets. The scrap dealer, one of his helpers and the school peon who allegedly sold the answer sheets have been taken into custody. As per a report by NDTV, the scrap dealer has told the authorities that the school’s peon had sold the answer sheets to the scrap dealer for Rs. 8,500.

As per the board policy, the school Boards are supposed to preserve the answer sheets of the students for at least two years. The preservation is also important to cross-check the claims of scrutiny of answer sheets by students.

The Class 10th Board results in Bihar were announced on June 26, after a delay of 6 days, apparently because search for the missing answer sheets was on.