Wrist Watches Not To Be Allowed Inside Plus II Exam Centres

Bhubaneswar: The state government has decided to intensify security for the annual Plus II exams beginning March 7 and not allow candidates to enter exam halls with wrist watches. This is being done as question papers of the annual High School Certificate exams were found floating on social media recently.

Talking to journalists after a high-level meeting presided over by chief secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi at the State Secretariat here on Thursday, School and Mass Education secretary Pradipta Mahapatra said a decision was taken to not allow students to enter exam halls with wrist watches. “Nowadays, some wrist watches have a hidden camera, with which students can easily take photographs of question papers and forward it to anybody, either through Bluetooth or through the Internet,” Mr Mahapatra said. “Keeping this in mind, students have been asked not to bring wristwatches to exam centres. Apart from this, there will be no use of any other electronic gadget and cellphone, either by students or by teachers and other staff engaged in exam duty.”

He said the Council of Higher Secondary Education has completed the process for the examinations. Question papers will be kept in 202 examination hubs from where they will be sent to examination centres on the day of the examination under tight security provided by the local police. “Apart from this, policemen will be deployed at all examination centres,” he said.

He also said that CCTV cameras will be installed at all examination centres. “Out of a total of 1,091 centres, CCTV cameras have already been installed at 937.”

A total of 3,69,000 students of Arts, Science, Commerce and Vocational Education will write the examinations, which will conclude on March 30.