Assam govt to probe class X paper leak by retired HC judge

A retired High Court judge will conduct an inquiry into the alleged leak of question papers in two subjects during the ongoing class X Assam board examination.
State Education Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said, "We will conduct a probe into the entire matter by a former High Court Judge once the examinations are over."
He also said he would request Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal to relieve him from the education portfolio.
Question papers of social studies and modern indian languages (Assamese) subjects, examinations for which are due on February 24 and March 7 respectively, were wrongly distributed among students in a couple of examination centres yesterday, in place of mathematics.

The Board of Secondary Education, Assam (SEBA), which conducts the class X matric examination, has today announced that new question papers would be set for the social studies and MIL (Assamese) examinations.
SEBA also rescheduled the social studies examination to March 11 next.

Sarma claimed that the question papers were not distributed among any student or leaked. He said SEBA has decided to hold the examinations with new set of papers in order to dispel any doubt in the minds of the examinees.
"We have received official reports that only the question paper bundles of these two subjects were wrongly opened by the headmasters (of schools where examination centres were set up) who had immediately sealed them again," he said.

"Since media reports had led to doubts in the minds of people, we are going for a new set of question papers," he added.
Blaming the media for creating the question paper leak story, the minister alleged that "personal vendetta of a proprietor of a leading media house in the state" against him had led to the situation.
"The innocent students are being held hostage in this personal feud. I will request the chief minister to relieve me of the education department since I do not want students to suffer because of a personal clash," Sarma added.