A bus attacked by a Chhatra Parishad activist outside the Sovabazar Metro Railway station on Thursday. Picture by Pabitra Das

The CBSE examination scheduled for Friday has been postponed to April 7 in Bengal.

M.C. Sharma, CBSE controller of examinations, said from Delhi on Thursday that the Class X English paper would be held as scheduled in the rest of the country. The date has been changed only for Bengal, on the request of principals of Calcutta schools, who were worried about holding the test on a bandh.

“We are relieved that the exam has been postponed,” said Mukta Nain, principal, Birla High School for Boys. Nearly 450 students from the school are writing the test.

On Wednesday, the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education and the ICSE-ISC council had decided to put off their exams scheduled for Friday, but the CBSE had not. On Thursday morning, the board sent a fax to schools in Bengal, informing them of the deferment.

But CBSE and ICSE-ISC students in Bengal are worried because now there will have to be two sets of question papers — one for the state and another for the rest of the country — which they think is “unfair”. The students feel the exam should have been postponed everywhere.

“There are certain chapters that are important for this year’s exam. We wonder how best the council will be able to do justice to us, as the question paper for all the other states will have to be different from that for Bengal,” said Sanjukta Guha, a student of a south Calcutta school.

But Gerry Arathoon, chief executive and secretary, Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations, said it was not possible to put off the ICSE-ISC examinations in all the states.

“We will ensure that the students are not affected. They need not worry, because parity will be maintained between the two sets of question papers,” he said.