Exam staff accountable for info on OMR sheets

Tribune NewsService

Chandigarh, November 28

After the Punjab State Technical Education and Industrial Training Board decided to put up CCTV cameras to monitor the exams of polytechnics and Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs), the spotlight has now shifted to officials deputed on examination duty.

With nearly one lakh students appearing in the semester exams at 96 centres across the state, the board has made the centre superintendents and invigilators accountable for the cases where there is a mismatch regarding student-related information on the optical mark recognition (OMR) sheets.

Anurag Verma, Principal Secretary, Technical Education, said to ensure smooth conduct of exams, officials from higher education institutions of the government had been deputed as stationary observers, apart from reducing the number of centres.

During the scrutiny of the cases related to result late (RL) cases, the board found that most of these were due to a mismatch of student and subject information filled at the time of examination. “As a result, the centre superintendents and invigilators have now been asked to ensure that the information on the ORM sheets is filled correctly,” said a senior official.

The defaulters would be taken off the examination duties and the department might also impose a penalty on them, he added.

“In the earlier cases, a warning had been issued to examination staff,” said Rajesh Kumar Gupta, Secretary, Punjab State Technical Education and Industrial Training Board.

Due to the installation over 1,000 CCTV cameras and shifting o examination centres from private polytechnics and ITIs to state-run institutes, cases of mass-copying have been contained to a great extent.