No re-exam of Class 10 maths paper, says CBSE

New Delhi: The Central Board of Secondary Education will not hold a retest for the Class 10 mathematics paper that was leaked before the exam, a government official said on Tuesday, adding the decision was taken keeping in mind the “interest of students”.

The final decision of not holding a Class 10 maths retest came after a thorough analysis and evaluation of the answersheets that showed no specific trend that the leak impacted the exam outcome. Union education secretary Anil Swarup tweeted: “Consequent to the preliminary evaluation of the impact of reportedly leaked CBSE Class 10 maths paper and keeping in mind the paramount interest of students, the CBSE has decided not to conduct a re-examination even in the states of Delhi-NCR and Haryana. Hence, no re-exam for Class 10”.

After largescale protests by students over the leaked CBSE papers, the government had announced the Class 12 Economics re-exam will be held on April 25. It had said the Class 10 maths re-exam will be held only in Delhi and Haryana if the police investigation pointed to a “large-scale leak”.

The Class 12 Economics re-exam date, the government said, was announced to ensure the results were declared in time for the students to meet deadlines for university admissions.

On Tuesday, the education secretary spelt out the reasons why the Class 10 maths exam was not scrapped even after getting information about the leak. Nine hours before the Class 10 maths exam, the CBSE got a copy of the handwritten questionpaper by email. The sender said the maths paper had leaked on WhatsApp and urged the CBSE to cancel the paper. Mr Swarup said: “The email came at 1.29 am on March 28 (early Wednesday) but the mail was seen at 8.55 am by the CBSE chairman. The paper was sent for verification. Just because there was an alert, we couldn’t have stopped the exam.” He said the Maths exam began at 10 am and “could not practically be stopped”.

The news came as a relief for over 14 lakh students. But many angry parents and students have demanded strict action against the CBSE, and particularly its chairperson Anita Karwal, over the leaks.