CBSE drops encrypted question paper plan for board exams, goes back to sending hard copies

After toying with the idea of using only encrypted question papers in CBSE Class X and XII board examinations this year following last year's question paper leak episode, the board is going ahead with the traditional method of sending question papers to test centres.

During the 2018 board examinations for class X and XII, the leakage of question paper in Delhi and some other parts in the country over WhatsApp had resulted in major embarrassment and loss of face for the CBSE and the Union Human Resources Development ministry. Following this, the board had decided to adopt a new system to deliver question papers to examination centres under which encrypted question papers would have been sent directly to schools and passwords would be given to them to open the question papers at a specified time.

"We had tried this system during a few compartment exams at 32 centres last year wherein schools were asked to open and then print the question papers at a given time," a government official in the school education department of the HRD Ministry said. He, however, conceded that logistically it would be difficult to print question papers at all 4,500 examination centres during the regular examination. "Our assessment said that many schools have the required hardware and printing facilities to carry out the examination but in cases where it's not there we would not be easy to provide infrastructure and logistic support to schools," another official said. "So to be on the safer side we are sending physical papers to centres and encrypted question papers are being prepared only as a back-up plan," he added.

The Board, at one point, had even thought of giving question in tablets to students but did not go ahead with it because of high costs involved. In March last year, after it emerged that class XII Economics and class X Mathematics papers had been leaked, the CBSE had decided to re-orgainse examinations for the two papers. Following large scale protests, the plan to re-conduct class X Maths paper was dropped and test only for class XII Economics was held again in late April