Patna: The additional district magistrate-cum-chief secrecy officer (Samastipur) has written a letter to Samastipur district magistrate (DM) Pranav Kumar, highlighting anomalies in the number of Intermediate examination copies sent for evaluation.

The officer has said the number of copies mentioned in the despatch memo sent for evaluation differs from the actual number of copies. The additional district magistrate has sent the list of 35 schools in the district, where number of copies as mentioned in the despatch memo differs from the actual number of copies. While in some schools, the actual number of copies is more than what is mentioned in the memo, in some other schools, the actual number of copies is less.

The centre superintendent sends the despatch memo in a sealed envelope containing answerpapers of candidates. The top of the sealed envelope has a highly confidential mark, the school name, the name of the centre the examination was conducted, the subject and the number of copies.

The number of copies mentioned in the memo for biology paper from St Joseph School Dalsingsarai is 535 but when the packet was opened, only 515 were found.

Similarly, for evaluation of English papers from Holy Mission Public School, Mohanpur, the number of copies in the despatch memo was 104 but only 94 copies were found in the packet.

However, the Samastipur DM said: "Strict action will be taken in this connection. District education officers have been asked to issue showcause notices to teachers concerned in this connection." but the Bihar School Secondary Education Association has termed the incident as "gross negligence made by some teachers assigned invigilation duty".

Secondary teachers' association spokesperson Abhishek Kumar said: "A high-level probe must be carried out."