KARACHI, June 20: The Class IX Annual Examinations 2006 of the Board of Secondary Education Karachi started on Tuesday with the English Compulsory Paper I of the Science Group.

This was stated by the BSEK Controller of Examinations, Muhammad Salim Khan.

He said that papers of the General Group (regular and private) will begin from June 21 with English Compulsory Paper I as the first paper.

Talking to APP on Tuesday, Salim Khan said there were reports of power outages at some examination centres.

“We are helpless as far as the problem of power outage is concerned,” he remarked.

The controller said that at one of the examination centres, seven candidates were not sitting on seats allocated to them.

He said that the monitoring team of the BSEK detected this and marked the candidates as absent. They were later informed that these candidates were sitting somewhere else within the premises.

Mr Khan said this could not have been done without the school management’s help.

He said that at the said examination centre, the headmaster of the school concerned was the centre superintendent while the teaching staff performed the task of invigilation.

The controller further said that the case of seven candidates as well as any other of impersonation would be placed before the Unfair Means Committee of the BSEK.

More than 150,000 candidates are appearing in the Class IX Annual Examinations at 400 centres set up at government and private schools in the city.

The theory papers will be conducted in the morning session from 9am till noon up to July 1 while the practical exams are scheduled from July 15, it was said. The result would be notified by September this year.—APP