OUR CORRESPONDENT
MANGALDAI: An untoward incident marred the first day of the High School Leaving Certificate (HSLC) examination at Gorukhuti HS School in Sipajhar, Darrang district. The exam was scheduled to begin at 9 a.m., and all students were present in the examination hall, ready to start. However, even by 10:10 a.m., the question papers had not arrived, leading to intense anger among parents at the centre. The parents strongly protested against the alleged negligence of the school authorities and SEBA, creating a tense situation.
The Senior Superintendent of Police of Darrang, Hemanta Kumar Das, later arrived at the examination centre and brought the situation under control. The bundle of question papers finally reached the centre around 10:10 a.m., and the examination began with a delay of over one hour. Due to this mismanagement, the scheduled duration of the examination had to be extended.
It is worth noting that the question paper bundles for the HSLC examinations, which began today, had been dispatched by SEBA on February 6. The Officer-in-Charge Chief Invigilator of Gorukhuti HS School, Minaram Nath, along with the school's Grade IV employees, Gourav Bora and Pabitra Nath, had collected and inspected the bundles at Sipajhar Police Station and placed them in three boxes in the strong room.
However, this morning, when Minaram Nath went to the police station to collect the Assamese subject papers, he could not locate the bundle in the designated box. Despite nearly an hour of searching at the police station, the papers could not be found. Eventually, the question papers had to be urgently brought from SEBA, resulting in the delayed commencement of the exam.
Investigations revealed that Minaram Nath, in his capacity as Chief Invigilator, had collected the question paper bundles on February 6 but, due to negligence, had placed the Assamese and Social Science papers for Gorukhuti HS School into the box meant for Kurua Higher Secondary School. Consequently, when the designated boxes at Gorukhuti HS School were checked today, the Assamese papers were missing, causing chaos at the centre.
The incident has been attributed to the extreme negligence and carelessness of the Officer-in-Charge Chief Invigilator, which disrupted the smooth conduct of the examination.
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