Registering a marginal increase from last year, 82.74 per cent of the candidates passed the Madhyamik Pariksha (Secondary Examination), 2016, in West Bengal. Last year the figure stood at 82.66 per cent.
This year a total of 11,44,097 candidates appeared in the examination, out of which 9,28,056 were successful.
As for the district-wise success rate in the examination, Purba Medinipur topped the list (93.10 per cent), followed by Kolkata (90.62 per cent), South 24 Parganas (89.46 per cent) and North 24 Parganas (88.35 per cent).
Last year also, Purba Medinipur had topped the list. The district with the lowest pass percentage Jalpaiguri (67.80 per cent) also remained the same as last year.
In this year’s merit list, the first ten slots have been occupied by 66 students while the second and the third rank have respectively three and two candidates.
Souvik Barman from Cooch Behar district held the first rank. In the list of top 10 candidates, only two were from Kolkata who ranked ninth in the merit list along with 13 other students. Srijita Das and Shreyans Chatterjee from Kolkata appeared ninth in the merit list. Among the Muslim candidates, Farhad Kabir jointly held the ninth spot with nine other candidates.
Pointing out that in the current examination the number of female candidates from the minority community is higher than that of the male candidates, senior administrator Kalyanmoy Ganguly said: “I am very proud to mention here that in this year, female Muslim candidates (1,67,561) have outnumbered their male counterparts (1,04,989). It indicates a positive trend among the female children of the minority community to join the main stream.”
On a general basis also the number of women candidates (6,24,308) is also higher than their male counterparts (51,97,89).