Sujan Kaur, a student of Dashmesh Convent Senior Secondary School, Sardulgarh in Punjab’s Mansa district, secured 500 marks out of 500 to top the state in the PSEB Class 12 board examination. The Punjab School Education Board (PSEB) declared the result Wednesday. Students can check the results at the board’s website www.pseb.gov.in from 8 am Thursday. Shreya Singla of M S D Senior Secondary School, Bathinda, ranked second in the state with 99.60 per cent marks as she secured 498 marks out of 500. Navpreet Kaur of BCM Sr Secondary School, Jamalpur, Ludhiana, got the third rank in the state by securing 99.4 per cent marks (497/500). All three toppers are from the Humanities group. PSEB did not declare the group-wise toppers but issued a merit list of 343 students who have secured more than 97 per cent marks in the Class 12 board exams. Officials said as many as 915 students were from the sports quota. Meanwhile, Navneet Singh, a student of Government Model Senior Secondary School, Patiala topped the state in the Science stream by securing 496 marks (99.2 per cent), Simranjeet Kaur of the Shaheed Sipahi Sandeep Singh Government Senior Secondary School, Pars Ram Nagar, Bathinda, topped in the Commerce stream by securing 98.8 per cent marks. While declaring the results, Varinder Bhatia, PSEB, Vice Chairman, said this year the pass percentage was 92.47 per cent which is 3.52 per cent lower than the previous year. The pass percentage of the girl students was 95.14 while that of boys was 90.25, Bhatia said. He said 2,96,709 students had appeared for the exam and 2,74,378 cleared it. “The failed students are around 1.22 per cent. It is a low percentage. As many as 18,569 students have compartments,” he added. On the performance of schools, Bhatia said Government Schools have a pass percentage of 91.86 and that of non-government schools is 94.77. Open schools have a pass percentage of 77.05, he added. Speaking on the subject-wise performance of the students, the vice chairman said Commerce has a pass percentage of 98.30 while Humanities recorded a pass percentage of 90.62, Science 98.68, and Vocational 84.66. According to Bhatia, the Gurdaspur district has the highest pass per cent in the state at 96.91 while Barnala has the lowest at 80.47 per cent. Urban areas recorded a pass percentage of 92.90 while in the rural areas, the pass percentage was 92.17, he added. “Our staff worked hard to declare the result in the shortest possible time,” he also said. When asked about the usage of unfair means, the vice chairman said PSEB staff worked tirelessly to stop copying and only seven Unfair Means Cases (UMC) were reported during the exam. On the issue of the leaking of the English question paper, Janak Raj Mehrok, Controller Examination, PSEB, said the staff where the English paper was leaked will bear the financial losses.
