This year 42-year-old topper Ganesh Kumar was arrested for fudging his name and age, leaving the Bihar government red faced
Call it the case of once bitten, twice shy, or whatever you will, the Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB), before declaring the Matriculation Exam 2017 results on Thursday, conducted a personal verification-cum-interview of all students who made it to the Top 10 merit list, to check if they truly deserved the honours.
Generally unheard of in other boards, the verification was "necessitated" following the back-to-back "topper" emabarrassments, which brought global humiliation to the state exam board. While last year's topper Ruby Roy's "Prodical science" was still fresh in public memory, this year 42-year-old topper Ganesh Kumar was arrested for fudging his name and age, leaving the Bihar government red faced.
The Board even conducted a verification of the schools where the toppers studied, leaving nothing to chance. "This is the first time we have conducted a physical verification of merit holders. They were called to the BSEB headquarters in Patna, where a group of experts re-evaluated their copies and verified their personal details," BSEB chairman Anand Kishor said.
One of the toppers said they were asked about their age and relevant details furnished by them in their registration forms. The students were also asked questions from the subjects in which they had scored exceptionally well. For example, those who scored over 90 in Sanskrit, were asked to write some "shlokas".
Kishor said the Board had been successful in conducting fair and cheating free examination and evaluation, which reflected in the results as just over 50 per cent students passed the exams. Of the 17.23 lakh who wrote the exam, more than 8.56 lakh (49.68 per cent) examinees failed.
In another first, the Board awarded grace marks to pass students who were failing because of "few marks" or those who were narrowly missing on a better division. This allowed the results to be slightly better than last year, when only 47.15 per cent of the 15.77 lakh students had passed the exam.
With 93 per cent, Prem Kumar of Shree Govind High School-Lakhisarai, bagged the first position in the exam. The second and third positions were secured by Simultala Awasiya Vidyalaya (SAV)-Jamui students' Bhavya Kumari (92.8 per cent) and Harshita Kumari (92.4 per cent) respectively.
Altogether 19 students, including nine from SAV-Jamui, made it to the Top 10 merit list declared on Thursday. Kishor said, one more girl student had made it to the merit list, but her name is withheld till she appears before the Board for physical verification.
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