CBSE candidates are wished good luck with flowers at an Ahmedabad school. (PTI)

New Delhi, March 14: The Central Board of Secondary Education?s Class XII mathematics examination today was delayed by about 15 minutes as chaos broke out at test centres here over an alleged question paper leak.

The owner of Taxila Coaching Centre in Chandni Chowk, 50-year-old Jeevan Rastogi and his 21-year-old son Arpit were arrested at 1 am when they sold a question paper to a TV reporter posing as a customer for Rs 10,000, said Prabhakar, the deputy commissioner of Delhi police?s economic offences wing.

TV channels flashed the story, leaving examinees and their parents shocked and confused. Students and teachers remained uncertain about whether the examination ? scheduled to start at 10.30 am ? would be postponed.

?If the Common Admission Test paper can be leaked, so can the CBSE question papers. The trouble is that there is no longer any credibility left in the system anymore,? said Rakesh Chopra, who was anxiously waiting outside Sardar Patel Vidyalaya for his son, a student of Delhi Public School who was appearing for the examination.

?I saw the news on TV but my son had already reached the centre. Then I called up the school and I was told that it was a false alarm. But this has created a lot of panic. The TV channels should verify the news before telecasting it,? said Geeta Makhija.

?When I reached the hall, I was told that there was a paper leak. I was quite nervous, and waiting without knowing what might happen was quite irritating,? said Mrinal, a student of Air Force Bal Bharati School.

?We had asked the TV channel to wait for one or two hours before releasing the news so that we could verify the paper?s authenticity. But they did not want to wait,? said a police official.

In the morning, police officials reached the CBSE headquarters with a photocopy of the ?leaked? paper. CBSE chairman Ashok Ganguly checked the papers and said they did not belong to the sets meant for distribution on Monday.

?We have compared the question paper recovered from the arrested persons and the original question paper and found that the two do not match. They have been matched to all nine sets of the paper to be distributed to students. Not even a single question matched and the examination was held as scheduled,? said Ganguly.

Jeevan Rastogi and Arpit have been remanded in police custody till March 17. The police are now searching for Rastogi?s elder son Ankit, 23, who is accused of brokering the deal for the question papers.