Purported image of a few pages of the English second language question paper was circulated on social media, sometime after the class 10 state board examinations began in West Bengal on Friday, the second day of the exams.

The image of the question paper was uploaded on WhatsApp from an exam centre in Malda district, Education Minister Bratya Basu said.

West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE) President Ramanuj Ganguly said it cannot be termed a leak as only three of the 16 pages of the question paper were circulated on WhatsApp one and a half hours after the three-hour-long exam started at 12 noon.

"How can it be called a leak? The candidates were inside the exam centres and the exams were already in progress. You can describe it as an attempt by someone to sabotage the smooth conduct of the examination process. The board will not treat the issue lightly," he said when contacted by PTI.

Ganguly, who is touring exam centres in various districts since Friday, said the board has requested the state administration to trace the origin of this WhatsApp post which was later forwarded many times.

"The image of the question paper was circulated from an exam centre in Malda district. As stated by the Board president, I also think it is an act of sabotage. The board President will probably submit a report by tomorrow," the education minister told reporters on the sidelines of an event.

A guardian of an examinee in a north Kolkata school, who got the image on her WhatsApp number, said it was forwarded from one of her acquaintances in Murshidabad district.

Altogether 6,98,627 candidates are writing papers in 2,867 centres in the Madhyamik Examination conducted by the WBBSE. The exams began on February 23 and will continue till March 4.

In 2022, a purported image of the English question paper similarly surfaced on social media but the Board had said it was fake with no resemblance to the original one.

In past editions of the Madhyamik exams between 2017 and 2019, there had been similar instances when images of purported question papers of English, Physical Science and other subjects circulated on social media after the start of the exams. However, each time they did not tally with the original.

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