KARACHI, April 24: The HSC annual examinations 2003, under the Board of Intermediate Education, Karachi, began in 135 examination centres in a peaceful manner on Thursday.
In the wake of the recent clashes in educational institutions, the authorities concerned were apprehending a law and order situation at examinations centres, but no untoward incident was reported during the two shifts of the examinations.
In addition to law enforcing agencies, centre superintendents and BIE officials and the vigilance cell staff had taken measures to thwart any outside interference.
According to BIE sources, in all, one case of unfair means each from five colleges, including one for girls, were received in the first shift of examinations.
For the first shift examinations, about 20000 candidates were registered in the Commerce groups, and 15000 in the pre-medical group.
Reports of short supply of papers were also received from some centres in the morning, but that did not affect the process of the examinations which started at all the centres as per the schedule.
Examinations in the second shift were also held peacefully, wherein about 4500 candidates appeared in Computer Science-I paper of the General Science group.
In the meantime, in addition to permanently posted vigilance officers of the Board at each centre, nine teams, each comprising four senior teachers, also paid surprise visits to about 10 centres. Some other officials of the education department also visited the centres.
Referring to the very negligible, only five, unfair-means cases, from about 39500 candidates, a member of the vigilance team maintained that the papers, including the Principle of Economics, were not of the kind that encouraged copying.
Chairman of the Board, Prof Iftikhar H Zaidi, expressed satisfaction over the outcome of the day, and underlined the support of rangers and police personnel and others in the city and provincial governments.
He said that he paid visits to four examination centres—set up at the Premier College, the Jinnah College, the Government College for Men and Abdullah Girls College— and found rangers and police personnel present there.
The centre superintendents did not report any problem and invigilators were seen discharging their duties in a peaceful environment, he added.
According to a sources, three students made off with their answer scripts from three colleges, while two candidates, one of them female, were caught using unfair means during the examination.
Body search of the candidates at some of the centres was also conducted before their entry to the examination centres, added the source.
