‘Test papers stolen’: Class 7 annual exam of two subjects postponed

The remaining exams from April 25 till 28 will be conducted as scheduled but with new question papers, the circular issued by the education department Friday stated.

According to an FIR registered at Talaja police station in Bhavnagar late on Thursday evening, an unidentified person broke into the government primary school at Nesvad village in Talaja taluka and fled with 23 copies of question papers kept there.

The incident took place between 12:30 pm on Wednesday and 7:05 am on Thursday. The matter was reported to police and an FIR was registered in this regard at 8 pm on Thursday on the basis of a complaintfiled by Devraj Dhadhal, principal of Nesvad primary school.

The FIR quotes the Nesvad school principal as having stated that copies of question papers of all the subjects of Class 7 and one question paper for the subject of Gujarati language for the Class 8 were stolen.

District Primary Education Officer (DPEO) of Bhavnagar KV Miyani, however, said that only the question paper for Social Science for Class 8 and that for Science and Technology for Class 7 were stolen.

“As the question papers of Social Science and Science and Technology have been stolen from Nesvad school, we have decided to postpone examination for these two subjects. We are going ahead with examination of the rest of the subjects as per schedule and new dates for the examination for these two subjects will be announced in due course,” he said.

Police said they have launched an investigation into the incident. “We have registered an FIR in this connection and are verifying facts of the matter. A few suspects are with us and investigation is still ongoing,” said Safin Hasan, Assistant Superintendent of Police said.

Following the incident, the state education department issued a directive for all school heads to keep all sealed question paper packets with them at their residence and not in the schools.

“All school heads are directed to keep the sealed packets of question papers they have with them at their home and not in the schools. On the day of the exam, take these sealed packets to the schools and then distribute among students as per the examination schedule,” the circular stated.

Further, making changes in the process of collection and distribution of question papers, the GCERT Friday directed that the designated persons for each district are directed to personally collect the CD of question papers from GCERT on Friday.

A video conference meeting of all district primary education officers (DPEOs) and administrative officers (AOs), chaired by director primary education M I Joshi and director GCERT P A Jalu, was conducted Friday afternoon.

“Every district has to make copies of the CD as per the talukas which are to be given to the team constituting of one block resource centre (BRC) and cluster resource centre (CRC) co-ordinators and taluka primary education officer (TPEO) on April 23,” DPEOs and AOs were instructed.

This team of each taluka has to ensure that CRC makes copies of the question paper as per the number of students of Class 7 a day in advance of the scheduled exam at the BRC bhawan seal it school wise. The CRC co-ordinators have to collect these sealed packets a day on advance.

Following this, all school principals will be called at the clusters on the day of the exams and school principals have to then distribute these among students as per the exam schedule.

Bhavnagar district panchayat runs 931 primary schools across the district and the examination for upper primary section comprising classes 6, 7 and 8 began on Thursday.

The incident of alleged theft comes 10 days after Manish Sisodia, Education Minister of Delhi state government visited one of the schools run by the Bhavnagar district panchayat and one run by the Municipal School Board of Bhavnagar on April 11 and complained about poor infrastructure.

The DPEO added that the annual examination of the upper primary section was to be conducted from April 21 to April 28. “But it will run a bit longer as we will have a new set up examination papers for these two subjects.”

According to the FIR, when the principal came to the school on Thursday morning, he found the lock of his office broken.

Subsequently, he discovered that lock of a cupboard kept in his office — which contained the general register of the school as well as seven sealed covers containing question papers for annual examination for classes 6, 7 and 8 were kept — was also broken.

The principal then informed a local resident about the incident and in the meantime, four other teachers posted in the school also arrived.

The FIR quotes the principal as saying that he counted the number of copies of question papers in the seven covers and found that three copies of each of question paper for seven subjects of Class 7 were missing. The principal also concluded that one copy of question paper for Gujarati language subject for Class 8 was also missing.

“As the examination for the subject of Gujarati language for classes 6, 7 and 8 was scheduled for the day, we arranged that examination with the help of respective class teachers. The rest of the covers were sealed against in the presence of taluka primary education officer, principal of (Dihor) Pay Centre School and village leaders,” the FIR quotes Dhadhal as saying.

Following the incident, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Isudan Gadhvi told mediapersons, “It is extremely sad to know that now question papers are also getting stolen instead of getting just leaked. This incident has happened in the constituency of state education minister Jitu Vaghani… This school doesn’t even have any CCTV or security in place. The manner in which BJP has been playing with the lives of students and their parents, we would like to tell them one day the people will reply to your antics.”