KARACHI: In order to prevent irrelevant and unauthorised persons from turning up at any of the exam centres during a paper, Section 144 the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) will be imposed there, it was announced by the chairman of Board of Intermediate Education, Karachi (BIEK), on Tuesday.

“Keeping irrelevant and unauthorised persons from entering within the 400 metres of any examination centre will also take the pressure off the examination staff. So only the candidates and staff, who really ought to be there, would be present at the examination centres,” BIEK chairman Mohammad Akhtar Ghori said during a pre-examination press conference at their office.

In all, there are 212 examination centres of which 29 have been identified as sensitive while 17 are circled as extra-sensitive due to political, ethnic and local influence there. To keep things in order and under control, the chairman wrote to the controlling officer at the department of education about what they need. “I have written to the education department about what is needed by us for the smooth conduct of exams. I have also written to the commissioner of Karachi, Pakistan Rangers, IG of police, additional IG and K-Electric and the water board for their support. This time the confidential coordinating officer [COO] teams will be accompanied by security guards,” he said.

There will be 27 vigilance teams that would randomly be visiting the exam centres. Each four-member vigilance team will comprise senior professors. A special vigilance team with more powers has also been formed. The special vigilance team will remain in direct contact with the chairman. There will be 106 centre control officers for 56 centres during the morning shift and 50 centres during the afternoon shift. There will also be external centre superintendents where there was some trouble during the exams last year like Gadap Town, Murad Memon Goth, S.M. Arts and SM Commerce colleges.

“Using force to stop this menace of copy culture is not good but under the present circumstances we really don’t have much of a choice here,” said Mr Ghori.

“For the first time, BIEK will also have an IT team with smartphones who will be checking any doubtful admit cards with us on WhatsApp,” he said.

Even on Tuesday, just a couple of days before the examinations, BIEK’s office was thronged by worried students looking for their admit cards. The board chairman said that this was unfortunate. “Their colleges, which are usually private colleges, have been sloppy or they have not registered with the education department. So they turn to us to provide the candidates admit cards. What we are doing is to ask them to appear in person and take provisional cards with a stamp which state that since their institution is not registered we are allowing them to sit for their exams,” he said.

Asked if it was right to make the students run from pillar to post for their admit cards at this stage when they should be studying, the board chairman said it was important for them to appear in person to do away with agents, etc. “These colleges which don’t provide them their admit cards on time also have office clerks causing unnecessary trouble in the hope of gathering bribes or favours. We don’t want those clerks turning up here now,” he said.

BIEK’s annual exams that are being conducted in two phases will see the first phase commencing from April 28 to May 19 and the second phase from May 30 to June 19. There are 178,654 candidates registered to appear in first phase. The exams will be conducted in two shifts — from 9.30am to 12.30pm and from 2.30pm to 5.30pm. The morning shift will have pre-engineering, pre-medical, general science, home economics and medical technology papers for which 98,640 candidates are expected to appear while the second shift will see 80,014 students, including commerce (regular) and private students appearing for their papers.

One pre-engineering student of Ayesha Bawany Government College, who has been jailed, will be taking his papers in jail. “We don’t want to deprive any student from appearing in his or her annual examination,” the chairman said.

Published in Dawn, April 27th, 2016