Patna: Education has been under the lens ever since topper’s scam rocked Bihar. The state’s education department was once again left embarrassed after a Class 7 question paper defined Kashmir as a country.
The question paper given to Class 7 students asked them to write about the nationality of five countries.
“What are the people of the following countries called?”. Kashmir was mentioned as a country in the list which was distributed across government schools.
Other countries listed in the question paper were China, Nepal, England and India. Sources said that a student appearing for the examination pointed out the error to the invigilators.
Officials said that the examination was part of Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan, a Central government programme on elementary education, and was being conducted by the Bihar Project Education Council (BPEC) department.
The officials associated with the department have, however, blamed the printing press and also apologised for the error.
“The question will not be taken into account during evaluation. We apologise for the printing error,” Rajiv Ranjan Prasad, BPEC state programme officer, told reporters.
Sources claim that continuous goof-ups in the education department have offended Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, who may order an internal probe into the matter.
Last week, a university in Bihar had released admit card bearing a picture of Lord Ganesh. The university had distanced itself from the controversy and blamed the cyber cafe from where the student got the admit card printed.
In 2016, the state education department was left embarrassed after a school topper, Ruby Rai, during a TV interview had said that her subject political science was all about cooking and even pronounced the word political as prodigal.
The SIT had later arrested around 20 persons in connection with the toppers scam.
In 2015, the Bihar education department was globally criticised after pictures of a government school in Vaishali district showed people scaling up window shades and walls to hand over answer chits to students appearing for board examination while the police on duty helped them.
