Bhubaneswar, May 29: Dhenkanal aced the Plus Two exams by bagging top honours in science and arts. The results were announced today with the state securing an overall pass percentage of 70, which is a slight dip from last year’s 70.63 per cent.

Of the 2.81 lakh candidates who appeared in the exam, 1.97 lakh candidates have passed, said higher education minister Badri Narayan Patra. The success rate in science (72.07 per cent) and arts (69.59 per cent) fell marginally, while commerce results (68.1 per cent) showed improvement this year.

Among districts, Dhenkanal fared the best in science and arts with pass percentages of 85.70 and 82.33 respectively. Khurda topped in arts with 80.67 students clearing the exam. Nuapada, Deogarh and Sundergarh were among the worst performing districts in science, commerce and arts respectively.

All major colleges in Bhubaneswar performed well, including the BJB Junior College which recorded a pass percentage of 98.

Like previous years, girls outperformed boys across all three streams this year too. In science, girls recorded a pass score of 73.79 per cent while for boys it was 71.04 per cent.

Similarly, in the commerce stream, 73.52 per cent girls were successful as against 66.01 per cent boys while the corresponding percentage in arts stream is 72.98 per cent and 65.43 per cent respectively.

Students bagging first division marks were outnumbered greatly by those securing second and third division. In vocational education, a total of 9,057 students appeared of which 5,660 students passed, recording a pass rate of 62.49 per cent.

Though 2,620 students had been booked for malpractice, no results were withheld. On the other hand, seven colleges recorded nil results. These include Mahanadi Junior Science College in Cuttack, Government Junior College in Gajapati and Swami Vivekananda College in Berhampur.

Ayush College of Commerce and Management in Balangir, Creative Institute of Science and Trade in Berhampur, Swami Vivekananda College in Rayagada and Government Vocational Junior College in Malkangiri also figure in the list of nil results.

The colleges will be served a showcause notice and action will be taken accordingly, said Patra. Following cases of question leak during the exams, the Council of Higher Secondary Education did not bring out the top-20 list this year for the first time. This, however, led to dissatisfaction among many meritorious students and various college authorities.

“In the absence of a merit list, many colleges are claiming to have topped the exams which is creating confusion. The authorities seem to have done it to save private colleges from getting into trouble,” said Mrunmayee Jena, a teacher.

The minister, however, said that copies of students securing more than 90 per cent marks were rechecked before publication of the results.

“No discrepancies were found in those answersheets,“ said Patra, adding that appropriate action would be taken against colleges involved in question paper leak and unfair practices after the completion of crime branch inquiry.

Council officials said it was not possible to say if private colleges fared better than the government ones this year.

Success rate up

BJB Autonomous College registered a pass percentage of 94.32 in the final year degree exams, an improvement of over four per cent from last year. While the success rate for science stood at 95.50 per cent, for commerce and arts it was 95.93 per cent and 91.53 per cent.