Guwahati, May 6: The Board of Secondary Education, Assam (Seba), is behind schedule in its plan to declare the matric (Class X) examination results this month but students in Assam and Meghalaya performed exceptionally well in the ICSE (Class X) and ISC (Class XII) examinations, the results of which were announced at 3pm today.

Dispur had set a target of declaring the results ahead of May 19, the day of counting for the Assembly polls.

Over four lakh students have appeared for the exam.

Though the matric exams ended in the first week of March according to schedule, Seba could not start evaluating the answer scripts till April because of a fire in a Jorhat school, where thousands of answer scripts were burnt.

Nearly 10,000 answer scripts of the matric or High School Leaving Certificate examination were destroyed in an early morning blaze at Sankardev Seminary High School in Jorhat district on March 4.

"The unfortunate incident was a major setback in the fast progress of our evaluation work. The incident had forced the board to conduct re-examinations of different subjects till March 31. So the actual evaluation started nearly a month after the matric exam was over," Seba chairman Dhandev Mahanta told The Telegraph today.

Though Mahanta said Seba was doing its best to declare the results between May 25 and May 31, much of the work remains.

Sources, however, made it clear that going by the current pace of work, it would not be possible to declare the results this month.

"It will not be practically impossible to declare the results in May. The entire exercise, starting from evaluation of answer scripts, calculation of marks, entering marks in marksheets and printing takes at least two months. As evaluation started in April this time, it is now only more than a month," a source said.

Sources said considering the loss of time, the board will be in a position to declare the results only in June. Last year, Seba declared the matric results on June 2.

Mahanta, however, said Seba would leave no stone unturned to declare error-free results this time.

Dispur has asked Seba to reverse its own decision, taken two years ago, to reduce the number of ranks from 20 to 10 in the merit list. From this year, the list will have the names of the top 20 students.

In 2012, then education minister Himanta Biswa Sarma asked Seba to snip the number of ranks in the merit list.

Sarma argued that the merit list created extreme competition among students and schools, which might not always be healthy. But Sarma's successor, Sarat Borkataky, argued that the merit list inspires students and motivates them to do well.

"As the number of examinees has gone up, let more meritorious students see their names in the merit list and get inspired," an education department official said.

ICSE and ISC Students of Sanskriti The Gurukul, a leading school in the city, passed with flying colours.

Of the 49 students from the school who appeared in the ICSE exams, 24 secured 90 per cent and above aggregate marks.