Higher Secondary students on the first day of the exam in a Jalpaiguri school. Picture by Biplab Basak

Malda/Calcutta, March 11: Another set of Madhyamik question papers has gone missing: this time from Malda. But the rules in place don’t have the tooth to punish callous teachers.

Ashok Kumar Bera of Malda Town School apparently dropped 72 corrected Bengali second paper answer scripts while going to his head examiner’s house on his motorcycle yesterday.

The board of secondary education can at best blacklist Bera, which means he will never be an examiner again. In a state where most teachers are reluctant to take up the examiner’s assignment, “blacklisting” may well be blessing rather than punishment.

Forty-nine physical science answer scripts went missing from Surya Sen Street in Calcutta a week ago. A retired teacher lost them while heading home from the head examiner’s house.

Thirty-three corrected geography answer scripts were found lying on a roadside in Hooghly’s Haripal yesterday. A local resident spotted the bundle and called police.

A board official said: “Such frequent loss of scripts has never happened before.”

The board has decided to meet school education minister Partha De to work out a way of making teachers more accountable. “An emergency meeting of the board’s examination committee will also be called. We have to punish errant examiners,” said secretary Swapan Sarkar. The board is “working out the modalities” on how to ensure that “students don’t suffer”.

Bera had been given 206 answer scripts to correct. He had completed 72 and was taking them to the head examiner after school. “Midway, I realised that the bag in which I was carrying the answer scripts was missing. I retraced my route, asking people if they had seen it. But no one had a clue,” said the teacher, who lodged a complaint with Englishbazar police station.

Head examiner Susmita Som, a lecturer in Gour College, Malda, said Bera should not have taken the answer scripts to school.