Minister asks I-T students to help plug paper leaks
NEWDELHI: Union human resource development minister Prakash Javadekar on Friday asked engineering students to develop a distribution system that could prevent the leak of question papers as outrage mounted over the Central Board of Secondary Education’s decision to reconduct Class 10 mathematics and Class 12 economics exams after the tests were circulated on social media.
Javadekar is facing protests by students, who have accused the board of negligence and demanded immediate action against the guilty, and youth leaders from the Congress party. The agitating students said they were “suffering because of CBSE’S mistakes” as they held demonstrations in several parts of Delhi.
The main opposition party has blamed the Centre of doing little to check malpractices in the examination system and demanded Javadekar’s removal as well as the sacking of board’s chairperson Anita Karwal.
“In a vast country like ours, where you have to distribute question papers to millions of students, how to do it? The paper is printed at some place. Then it is packed in another place. It is sent to the centres. There are so many places. How to ensure that nobody can breach the security? You have to build this firewall,” Javadekar said in on Friday.
Javadekar was speaking during the second edition of Smart India Hackathon 2018 — claimed to be the world’s largest — in which more than 10,000 engineering students from across India will try to find solutions to around 340 problems faced by various ministries and state governments. The hackathon is being organised jointly by the ministry of HRD, All India Coun- cil for Technical Education (AICTE), Inter Institutional Inclusive Innovation Centre and Persistent System.
Javadekar said that organisers of exams like GRE and GMAT have question banks and every candidate gets a randomly different question paper.
“But, we want a single question paper at all centres simultaneously. This always has possibilities of being leaked. I am throwing this challenge because I am very sure that the new generation, which wants transparency and merit to prevail, will come up with brilliant solutions,” the minister said.