Around 96 cases of mass copying during a Class X English examination at the Kavali test centre in Shehara taluka of Panchmahal district in Gujarat was discovered after an essay on “My Best Friend” was found to be nearly identical in almost all the 100 answer sheets.
The Indian Express reported that the matter came to light when it was found that the Class X students from this district, who often failed to spell simple words like ‘friend’, ‘clever’, ‘fondly’, ‘tennis’ had excelled in the English paper using all of these words and several more.
The instance of mass copying was confirmed further, when the evaluation of Sanskrit papers revealed that all students had written the same answers and made the same mistakes.
Further investigations alleged that over 200 Class X students were discovered cheating at various examination centres in Panchmahal district during the Board exams, which were conducted by the Gujarat Secondary and Higher Secondary Examination Board (GSHSEB).
Other than the 96 cases which were discovered after the results of the English exams had been released, another 130 stood on trial by the state board, when blatant similarities were found between the answer papers of these Class X students.
These cases of mass copying were detected from Morva Rena, another centre of Panchmahal district, The Indian Express reported.
Certainly this is a reason for concern for the state education department if such glaring copying cases are detected in language subjects which is otherwise considered to be easier than Maths and Science. This needs to be further investigated.A GSHSEB official told The Indian Express
True to its word, the GSHSEB undertook strict action against the students who were accused of mass copying, with measures such as barring them from sitting for exams for the next two to three years.
The Board also stated that it would be taking action against the teachers of these classes hailing from the Panchmahal district, who the Board believes have been facilitating mass copying during exams.
This year strict action will be taken against all those involved, right from teachers who assisted in mass copying to the centre supervisors.GSHSEB chairman A J Shah told The Indian Express
The Board was further sensitised about the incident after they found that the CCTV camera footage of the exams taking place, was tampered with, the report adds.
On being questioned about the mysterious gaps in the CCTV camera footage, the exam-centre in charge sighted “technical problems”, due to “erratic power supply”, which when corroborated was found to be false.
We decided to investigate these cases and therefore directed the evaluators to keep the answer-sheets of students from this centre separate and not mix with the other districts. They were told to spot what is “common” and “unusually different” in these answer sheets.GSHSEB Officer on Special Duty (OSD) M A Pathan told The Indian Express
The report adds that when some of these students were called out for mass-copying and asked to write down some of the words, such as “tennis”, that they had used in the paper they had scored so well in, they failed to spell it correctly. Some could not even write their own names in English.
(With inputs from The Indian Express)
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