Bengaluru, November 27: In order to check exam malpractices in exam centres, the Secondary Education Examination Board has prohibited the students attending the exams with watches.

This norm would come into effect from the SSLC annual exam to be held next year and it was decided to put up wall clocks in exam halls, due to which, the students have to attend the exams without wrist watches. Earlier, the Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) had implemented this norm in CET exam. The KEA has purchased the wall clocks for all exam centres.

State Secondary Education Examination Board has announced the provisional time table for SSLC annual examination for 2019. As per the time table, the exams would be held from March 21 to April 4. Total 8.38 lakh students have enrolled for the exams to be held in over 3,000 exam centres.

Malpractice easy

Due to advanced technology, different varieties of wrist watches have come to market and it has become very easy to do malpractice through electronic watches. Through such electronic watches, the students can easily access their smart phones through Bluetooth option and involve in malpractice, it is said.

Some watches have the options of storing the photos and such watches are being called as cheat watches and they are available in the internet. Earlier, a student was trapped while engaging in malpractice during the exam in the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences.

Students oppose

But the students and parents opposed the decision of the board. They said that the students cannot follow the time if they do not have watches during exam hours. If needed, the board can prohibit digital watches. The students who will have normal watches should be allowed. Moreover, the digital watches which support the malpractice are costly and normal students cannot purchase them. So, the education department should withdraw its decision, they demanded.

“In order to maintain the quality of SSLC annual examination, the Board has decided to ban the watches. So, no one should wear wrist watches during exam time. Direction is given to put up wall clocks in all exam centres across the state”.

-       V Sumangala, Director, State Secondary Education Examination Board

Let the Truth be known. If you read VB and like VB, please be a VB Supporter and Help us deliver the Truth to one and all.



Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.

The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.

Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.

The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.

India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.

In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.

Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.

The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.

It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.

Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.

The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.

The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.

On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.