RAWALPINDI, March 18: The committee has been constituted to investigate leakage of primary standard examination question papers.

The executive district education officer ordered constitution of the committee after a strong resentment from the parents, teachers and students on the issue.

The examinations, which were scheduled on March 15, were cancelled, despite the fact that all the candidates had been issued roll numbers.

The cancellation of the annual examinations has put the educational career of more than 50,000 students at stake. The students and their parents are in a state of quandary, since no new examination date has yet been announced.

Parents have held the new education official responsible for the situation due to his alleged negligence.

Well-placed sources told Dawn that students were charged Rs15 as examination fee, whereas the total expenditure on the question papers, answer sheets and result cards was not more than Rs7 per student. The rest of the amount goes to the pockets of the education officials concerned, the source said.

Some of the students, specially those of private schools, are charged as much as Rs150 to Rs300 under the head, and this amount is distributed between the school teachers and education officials, the source said. About 30,000 students of private institutions were to take the examination. According to the source, bribes and corruption were routine matters while allotting choice examination centres to the students.

An education employee said, according to rules, examination centre could be established only in a high school, but the officials had set up most of the centres in primary and middle schools.