Bhubaneswar, March 7: Council of Higher Secondary Education today cancelled the Plus Two physics examination following reports of question paper leak.

The examination will tentatively be held again on March 25 and the decision has affected more than one lakh students.

“We came to know about the incident through the media, but the matter could not be confirmed immediately. Therefore, we allowed the students to appear for the exam that began at 10am,” said the council’s secretary, Tusharkanta Tripathy.

He said the authorities had decided to cancel the examination after tallying the question paper with the leaked questions.

“Action will be taken against those found guilty,” higher education minister Badri Narayan Patra said, adding that the other examinations would be held on schedule.

The incident comes in the wake of the council claiming to have taken special measures to conduct “fair and safe” exams this year. “The exam has been tentatively rescheduled on March 25. However, the dates and subsequent action will be decided at the exam committee meeting tomorrow,” council chairman Gauri Shankar Ray said.

The examination began on March 1 and is scheduled to end on March 31. Around 2.9 lakh students from 1,295 colleges are taking the examination in science, arts, commerce and vocational streams.

Last year, the entire matriculation exam conducted by the Board of Secondary Education, Odisha, was pushed back by around 10 days after the alleged theft of question papers from an examination centre.

The issue was discussed in the Assembly today with the Opposition Congress expressing concern over repeated incidents of question paper leaks in the state.

Students are upset with the abrupt cancellation of the exam. “This is quite disturbing. Physics is such an important exam and many of us had studied all of last night,” said Santosh Behera, a student.

Sources said incidents of leak have increased with the mushrooming of several private Plus Two colleges. These colleges use their power and contacts to get the questions papers to further their prospects.

“Some influential people manage to get the question paper leaked by using their money and contacts. They could either be targeting the question setters, getting it leaked through the printers (which are generally based outside the state), or getting it done through the centre supervisors of colleges that lie in the interior pockets and Maoist-affected belts,” said a senior official of the higher education department.