U.P. Board exams-2023: In a first, examinees to get stitched answer sheets

The decision has been taken after the board’s experiment to provide stitched answer sheets to 10 sensitive districts, where such practices were feared in 2020, yielded desired results. A total of 58,67,329 students, including 31,16,458 of high school and 27,50,871 of intermediate, are to write the 2023 U.P. Board exams.

The step is also aimed at further making examinations free of unfair means, they add. In the earlier examinations, the copying mafia used to take out the cover page of the usual stapled answer sheets of meritorious students at the centres and put it on the copies of the weaker students in lieu of cash after the examination was over.

In many such cases, the U.P. Board has in the past taken action against centre managers and teachers besides debarring the guilty schools from the examination over these very incidents.

“To prevent this, U.P. Board had started providing stitched answer sheets to select districts where such practices were feared in 2020 by sending stitched answer sheets to 10 sensitive districts of Mathura, Prayagraj, Muzaffarnagar, Hardoi, Ballia, Jaunpur, Azamgarh, Aligarh, Ghazipur and Kaushambi. This continued in 2021 and 2022 as well,” said a senior U.P. Board official requesting anonymity as no official is authorised to comment on confidential matters related to the exams.