In the end, it was an “easy” paper that brought smiles back on the faces of II pre-university (PU) students. Keeping their fingers crossed, nearly 1.74 lakh students entered the exam centres around 9 a.m. on Tuesday, but over three hours later they ambled out in jubilant mood after finding the chemistry re-examination paper “easy”.
As many as 1.74 lakh students wrote the exam across 968 centres in the State.
Following two leakages of chemistry question papers that resulted in the cancellation of the exams on March 21 and March 31, most students were jittery about the re-examination. Many felt that the chemistry paper on Tuesday was easier than the one they had answered on March 21, which was later cancelled by the Department of Pre-University Education.
After the last-minute preparations in the morning, some students checked the latest developments related to the exam on the television. Lavanya K.S., a student, said she watched the news before she left home. “After two question paper leakages, we had to hope that the paper was not only easy but also that there was no leakage,” she said, and added that there were no questions that were out of syllabus.
After the exam, there were celebrations outside several colleges.
Some students like Ramya R. said she had done better in the March 21 exam. “There was some seriousness while writing the other exams. That was missing for this exam and my preparation suffered,” she said.
Analysis by coaching centres showed that the questions were direct and it was a “feel-good” paper. They said they were two typing errors in the question paper.
K.R. Manjunath, principal of MES PU College, BTM Layout, here, said students were anxious when they came to the exam centre after nearly a fortnight. He said over the past week he had received several frantic calls from not just students but also from parents. “Once the exam began, many parents had a discussion with me on the paper leakages and the impact they had on the morale of students. I have written to the department about it and the measures that could be adopted to prevent such leakages in the future,” he said.
