Over 1.05 lakh students will sit for the annual Class 10 and 12 examinations which start in the Kashmir Valley on Monday.
Stringent security arrangements have been put in place. For the first time, the exam materials will be ferried by the police to the centres. All vulnerable schools have been left out of the list of centres.
“The question papers will be carried by the police to the centres,” Board of School Education chairman Zahoor Ahmad Chatt said. The Board has put the centres in the sensitive and hypersensitive categories.
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Around 35 schools have been burnt by unknown men in the Valley during the four-month agitation.
A large number of the students were opposed to the government’s decision to hold the exams in November. But the government has offered to hold the exams in March next too, as many students were arrested or wounded in the agitation. The authorities also offered to conduct the examinations covering just 50 per cent of the syllabus to make up for the classes lost due to the agitation that left 93 civilians dead and over 10,000 injured.
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Around 60 per cent of the injured are aged under 20. For the wounded students, the Board has offered helpers to write the answers.
However, if one goes by the roll-number slips distributed, over 90 per cent of the students have evinced interest in appearing for the exams.
Section 144, which bars assembly of more than four persons, has been in force at and around all centres. Special police squads will monitor the situation.
S.P. Vaid, Special Director-General of Police, Coordination, Law & Order, said foolproof security and transport plans were put in place in the sensitive and far-flung areas.
It’s war, says outfitThe Dukhtaran-e-Millat, a separatist outfit, described the examination process as “a war between the students and the police.”
It said Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti was holding the exams in order to “exhibit normality.”