KARACHI, May 22: A number of candidates, who took the HSC Commerce annual examination on Saturday claimed that a few of the questions in the Accounting paper were not in accordance with the syllabus.

However, officials maintained that there was nothing wrong with the paper and it was entirely as per the existing syllabus.

Students calling on telephone maintained that two of the three parts of question no 6 of Accounting-II were not in line with the syllabus.

They said that a sub-section of part-A and sub-section 2 of part-C of question no 6, which were related to depreciation method topics, were not supposed to be asked in the examination as these were not included in the BIE exam syllabus. They undulyasked for "sum of the year's digit method" and "cost resulted increase --", they remarked.

It was learnt that the problem was raised at examination centres but the centre staff failed to explain the status of the disputed questions.

A senior commerce teacher said the disputed depreciation computing methods in question had been dropped from the BIE syllabus about two years back, and as such it was understood that the paper setters or moderator of the paper at BIE had carried the omitted method inadvertently.

The benefit of the discrepancy in question no-6 should go to students, he added.

To another question, the senior teacher said that he had also examined Question no-4 of the Accounting-II paper, and would say that it was all from within the course, but placed before the candidates with certain innovation.

Controller, Board of Intermediate Education, Karachi Prof Asif Pasha said the problem was brought to his knowledge as well.

However, he said that after consulting the Head Examiner and paper moderator, he was firm that the entire paper of Accounting-II was prepared within the ambit of the prescribed course.

We at the board had a detail discussion on the disputed questions no 4 and 6 and it was resolved that the claim of students and teachers had no genuine ground, he added.

The students confused over the situation were of the view that BIE should hold a review meeting on the issue and seek a consensus of commerce teachers so that justice could be ensured to candidates.

UNFAIR MEANS: As many as 11 cases of unfair means were detected at various centres during the HSC examinations on Saturday. A total of 4 cases were reported to BIE in the morning shift, while another 7 cases, including one that of escaping away with an answer script at the Islamia Arts and Commerce College, were reported in the afternoon shift.