Cuttack: The annual High School Certificate Examinations, conducted by the Board of Secondary Education, began at 2,953 centres across Odisha on Saturday morning.
Reports said students entered the examination halls at 9am and were given the OMR sheets at 9.30am. The examination began at 10am.
As per schedule, the three-layer question papers arrived from the nodal centres amid tight security between 6am and 8.30am. After the first layer was checked by senior government officials in the rank of OAS, OES and OFS, the second layer was opened in the presence of the invigilators and students at 9.45am. The examination started after the students opened the last layer of question papers at 10am.
Unlike previous years, the students will not be given 15-minute extra time to go through the question papers before writing the answers.
A total of 5,87,720 students are writing the exams this year, of which 5,45,364 are regular students, 25,008 ex-regular, 2,106 regular correspondence and 211 ex-regular correspondence.
According to the revised schedule, HSC exams will be held from 10am to 12.30pm on all days except for Mathematics, which will continue till 12.45pm.
The Madhyama and the Odisha State Open School examinations will be held from 2pm to 4.30pm. While 3,009 students will write Madhyama examinations, 12,012 students will write the Odisha State Open School examinations.
Out of 2,953 centres, 2,830 have been earmarked for HSC students, 44 for Madhya students and 79 for the Odisha State Open School students.
Altogether 304 nodal centres have been set up for distribution of question papers, while 701 teams have been formed to despatch question papers to the examination centres.
For smooth conduct of examination, 58 flying squads, 44 special squads and six zonal squads have been formed to conduct surprise raids at the examination centres. Besides, additional police force has been deployed at sensitive examination centres to keep a check on malpractices.
