School and mass education secretary Usha Padhee releases matriculation results in Cuttack. Picture by Badrika Nath Das

Bhubaneswar, April 30: Sobbing faces dotted most schools and cyber cafes in the state today as students were left disappointed with their matriculation examination results.

Although 78.95 per cent regular students cleared the examination, many students complained that scores in subjects such as Sanskrit and Hindi were much below their expectation.

Unlike previous years, this time the students appeared the exams on the newly introduced optical mark recognition sheets and the evaluation was computerised. This was done in order to acquaint the students with various national-level competitive exams. Also, the results were published in grades for the first time this year.

At the city office of the Board of Secondary Education in Bhubaneswar, the officials had to lock up its main entrance after angry parents tried to storm into the office complaining about mismanagement in the evaluation process.

“I had expected at least 40 marks in Sanskrit. But, I got just 15. This has affected my overall percentage,” said Prajakta Samal. Another student, Pranab Behera also rued that his marks were much less than he had expected.

“This will affect my admission into desired college. I will send my papers for rechecking,” he said.

Similar complaints on Hindi and Sanskrit were received from students across the state, who suspected technical glitches in the evaluation process.

School and mass education department secretary Usha Padhee said: “We have received complaints regarding faulty results from various places. The Board of Secondary Education has already started working on it.”

The board has asked students to apply for re-evaluation through their school principals within the next three days. A board official informed The Telegraph that the overall pass percentage of regular students had registered a three per cent increase as only 70.80 students had passed in 2012 and 75.99 percent students had passed in 2013.

Deogarh district recorded a highest pass percentage of 80.03 while Malkangiri registered the lowest pass percentage at 34.04. The overall pass percentage of regular students stood at 67.65 in Cuttack and 59.32 in Khurda district.

Besides, a record number of 434 schools have registered 100 per cent results, while only 25 schools have recorded nil results this year. Board president Dakhya Prasad Nanda said that boys had outshone the girls as their overall pass percentage stood at 79.64 while 77.78 per cent girls passed the examination this year.