Over 1.8 lakh students absent on first day

Lucknow: More than 1.8 lakh students did not appear for Uttar Pradesh board examinations on the first day following the strict measures initiated by the Yogi Adityanath-led government to check copying in the exams.

The UP Board examination for class 10 and class 12 commenced on Tuesday and will continue till March 12.

"On the first day of examinations yesterday, over 1,80,826 students did not appear. It included over 53,100 high school and over 1.27 lakh intermediate students," Deputy Director Education Vikas Srivastava said.

An Education Department official said this number was due to the number of measures initiated by the state government, including installation of CCTV cameras in exam halls and using STF and local intelligence to check activities of education mafia.

A total of 66,37,018 students were registered to appear in this year's UP board exam. These include 36,55,691 appearing for class 10 exams and 29,81,327 students for class 12 exams. In Hardoi, 11,141 students--3,065 of high school and 8,076 of intermediate--were absent, in Azamgarh 8,842 students--6,754 of intermediate--were absent, Jaunpur 6,330 students--4,516 of intermediate--and Gonda 6299 students--4376 of intermediate--did not appear for the exams. In Firozabad, 5,214 students were absent, Mainpuri 4,922, Hathras 5,567, Moradabad 6,034, Gorakhpur 4,193, Sant Kabir Nagar 5,160 did not appear for exams.

Last year, the overall pass percentage for Class 10 was recorded at 81.18 per cent and in Class 12, 82.62 per cent students were declared successful.

Over 60.61 lakh candidates--34.04 lakh for Class 10 and 26.56 lakh for Class 12 were registered for the high school and intermediate exams in 2017. However, due to strict measures 5.94 lakh candidates left the exams and 1,862 examinees were caught copying. PTI