Education Secretary Anil Swaroop said the alleged leak had to be verified before taking a decision
Nine hours before the Class 10 math exam, the education board CBSE received a copy of the handwritten question paper by email. The Education Secretary
explained today why the exam was not scrapped straight away.
The e-mail had 12 attachments with handwritten question papers. The sender claimed that the math paper was leaked on WhatsApp and urged the CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education)
to cancel the paper."The mail came at 1.29 am on March 28 (early Wednesday) but the mail was seen at 8.55 am by the CBSE chairman. The paper was sent for verification. Just because there was an alert, we couldn't have stopped the exam," said Education Secretary Anil Swarup.
The math exam began at 10 am and "could not practically be stopped", said Mr Swarup. "Putting the children at an inconvenience at some fellow's message who might be playing a trick...we could not have done that."
Amid huge anger over leaked CBSE final papers, the government
has announced that the Class 12 Economics re-exam will be held on April 25. For the class 10 math exam, the Education Secretary said a decision would be taken later and the exam would be held only in July, in Delhi and Haryana.
The police have
written to Google for help to track down the whistleblower through their gmail ID.
The CBSE has been accused of sitting on at least two tip-offs that the exam papers had been leaked.
The board received an anonymous fax on March 23, which alerted it to the possibility that the paper for the Class 12 Economics exam three days later may have been leaked. The fax, which was from an unknown source, alleged that a coaching centre and two schools were involved in leaking the exam paper.
A day later, the board forwarded the fax to its regional office, which in turn passed it on to the Crime branch on WhatsApp.
The police contacted the coaching centre's owner, a man named Vicky. But he was let off in absence of any solid proof.
After the Economics exam on March 26 (Monday), the CBSE office received a packet with answers along with mobile numbers of four people who allegedly received the paper on WhatsApp.
On Tuesday, a day before the Class 10 math exam, the CBSE was well aware that the Class 12 Economics paper had been leaked.
A day later, the class 10 math paper was leaked at 1.29 am. The board went to the police 90 minutes after the exam.