Missing answer sheets: HC seeks govt’s reply
2 min readPATNA: The Patna high court on Friday sought the state government’s reply within four weeks on the missing 40,000 answer sheets of Class X examination conducted by the Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) this year.
Taking suo motu cognizance of TOI report published on June 20, the division bench of Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice Rajeev Ranjan Prasad asked the government to file a counter affidavit on the issue within four weeks. The Chief Justice turned the TOI report into a PIL.
Advocate general Lalit Kishore told the court that an FIR had been lodged in this connection and police were investigating the case. The answer sheets were kept in the “strong room” of S S Girl’s High School at Gopalganj. The matter surfaced only after two BSEB officials visited the school to verify the answer sheets of science, social science, Hindi, English, Sanskrit and mathematics of two examinees, who were probably among the top 10 rank holders. Following the missing answer sheets, the BSEB deferred the announcement of results from June 20 to June 26.
Counsel Dinu Kumar, who had brought the matter to the court’s notice, told TOI that the BSEB had the facility of storing answer sheets of at least three years at its Patna office. “Still, the answer sheets of the examinations conducted in the last two years have been left at different schools in several districts,” he alleged. Dinu said the situation remained the same despite topper scam in 2016 and 2017. “But BSEB has failed to change its working style,” he said.
“BSEB is not properly functioning and the FIR lodged in connection with the missing answer sheets is a mere eyewash,” he alleged.
Courtesy: TNN
