Angry students who did not receive admit cards for Intermediate examination attacked Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) office on Sunday and ransacked its information technology (IT) cell, damaging several computers.

The incident occurred in the afternoon, when there was thin presence of employees at the BSEB office. The Intermediate examination commences on February 14 and concludes on February 21.

Sources said around a dozen students entered the office on the pretext of inquiring about their admit cards.

The students entered the IT cell on the first floor and ransacked it. The agitated students also tried to burn the computers. However, alert employees doused the fire. Sources said the students fled before police could be called.

Sources said the students were protesting against the BSEB because many haven't received their admit cards yet. The students who had gathered outside the board office held the board and schools responsible for it. Starting this year, the BSEB issued admit cards online scrapping the offline mode. Taking lessons from last year's irregularities in the Intermediate results, the board shifted to the online examination. The online process started with form-filling and issuing of admits cards.

However, the board flunked at the very first stage with many candidates complaining of not receiving the admit cards and some complained of mistakes in them.

Anshu Kumar, an Intermediate candidate spotted at the BSEB office, said: "My subjects are physics, chemistry and mathematics but I have received an admit card mentioning biology as my main paper instead of mathematics."

Anshu was worried because he did not know how he would appear for the examination. There were several other candidates who found mistakes regarding name, date of birth and subjects mentioned in the electronically generated admit cards.

Dhiraj Kumar, another student who too was spotted at the office, said: "My application form was filled by the school principal and we were expected to get the admit cards from February 2 but till date we have not received any."

Sources said the reason behind many not getting the admit cards and anomalies in them was because the BSEB authorised respective school principals to prepare the cards. Principals, after collecting the students' information, had to send it to the BSEB office. The principals were given login identities and passwords to download the admit cards, which were to be handed over to the students. Sources said as computer literacy among teachers and principals at schools is poor it is from the principals' end that mistakes were introduced while uploading the students' information.

BSEB secretary Anup Kumar Sinha said: "The board had given enough time to the students to settle their grievances. The board had issued dates twice during which students could sort out their anomalies in their admit cards at their respective schools. Criminals are involved in the incident. They are working overtime to cancel the examination. Police action will be initiated against those candidates who were involved in the Sunday's ransacking."