A large number of students yesterday staged a protest at the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) against the leak of question papers and said that they had “lost trust” in the board.
The protesting blocked the road outside the CBSE office till police came and forced them to disperse.
More than 2mn students were affected by leaks of class 12 economics and class 10 economics
papers. The papers were circulated on Whatsapp before the exam.
The CBSE said on Thursday the students will now have to resit their exams.
“We just need to be assured that the subsequent papers will not be leaked. We have heard from several students that question papers of Hindi and political science (to be held next week) have also been leaked and are circulating on WhatsApp,” Aman, a class 12 student said.
“We have lost trust in the CBSE completely and we want the chairperson to conduct a meeting with the students and assure them of absolute guarantee against the paper leak,” he said.
“We prepared hard for months - now we are back to square one. The CBSE is at fault, they were unable to keep the papers safe. We are suffering because of the CBSE’s mistake,” a student told said.
The protesters slammed the board’s “utter negligence” in their conduct of the examinations.
Meanwhile, a Kerala student yesterday filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking quashing of the CBSE decision to re-conduct the exams.
Rohan Mathew, a student of Choice School in Kochi, said that the CBSE decision was arbitrary and illegal.
Mathew said a special committee should be set up to inquire into the “facts and circumstances” leading to the re-exam decision.
In Bengaluru, Congress leader Sachin Pilot questioned “why nobody in the government has taken the responsibility for paper leak that rocked the country”.
Pilot said the government was playing the blame-game instead of taking charge of the leak.
The Congress has alleged that an “exam mafia” is flourishing under the central government.
In other developments, thousands of Staff Selection Commission (SSC) candidates yesterday held a demonstration in New Delhi to protest against the “SSC paper leak scam”, leading to a scuffle with police.
The SCC candidates gathered at Parliament Street at 11am seeking a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the alleged paper leak in the Combined Graduate Level (CGL) Examination held in February.
As the protesters started moving towards Parliament, they were stopped by police. But as they broke the barricades, the police applied mild force to disperse them.
Also yesterday, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) said that it had seized properties worth Rs40mn of a former Bihar college principal in connection with the 2016 Bihar toppers scam.
“The ED has attached properties worth Rs4.53 crore of Bachcha Rai, his wife Sangeeta and his daughter Shalini under the sections of money laundering act,” the agency said.
Rai was the principal of Vishnu Rai College.
The agency has attached 16 plots worth Rs 1.99 crore located in Langanj, Mahua, Bhagawanpur and Hajipur of Bihar, bank balances worth Rs 13.46 lakh in three accounts of Bank of India, Rs 20.80 lakh in one bank account with the Canara bank, Rs 19.66 lakh in bank account maintained with Punjab National Bank of Bachcha Rai.
Police had earlier filed a case against Rai, former Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) chairman Lalkeshewar Singh and others for manipulating and managing the results of students of the college.