KARACHI, March 26: Instead of original admit cards, the Board of Secondary Education, Karachi, has issued photocopies to many of the SSC annual examination-2002 candidates, said sources in the Board.

The students are worried that they will have to suffer enormously in case staff at the examination centres did not entertain the photocopies as a permission to appear in the examinations.

It was learnt that a large number of prepared admit-cards could not be saved from the angry students who dismantled them at the examination section of the Board Office during the first week of March after the Board failed to deliver the cards within the stipulated period.

The BSE controller of examinations, Mohammad Saleem Khan, said over 1,500 attested photocopies of admit-cards had been issued to class X science group students.

Since the original cards were either lost or damaged during the ransacking incident at the Board, the BSE got copies of the third examination slips filled in by the students as part of their examination forms and found it viable to be issued as admit cards, he added. Recollection of information for preparation of original cards, duly signed by students, was not possible in the given situation, Mr Khan maintained.

He said the photocopies would stand valid for appearance in the examinations. Students should not worry as the photocopies signed by officials of the Board would be treated as admit cards.