June 5: Calcutta University students writing the Bengali honours (2017 Part III) examination were surprised to find more than half of today's question paper based on topics of an exam they wrote last week.

The examination was cancelled. A revised date will be announced soon.

Minutes after the Bengali honours Paper IV was distributed, students at over 100 exam centres realised that the questions were a mix of Paper III and Paper IV. The Paper III exam was held on June 1.

Only 40 per cent of the questions were from topics that are part of Paper IV. The rest were from the Paper III syllabus.

Examinees at several centres complained that the exam started at 11am but the colleges had no information about the cancellation of the exam till about 45 minutes later.

Some students said they had already written for 45 minutes when the invigilators announced that the test had been cancelled. At other centres, students said they came to know about the cancellation of the exam at 11.30am.

"It was evident that the questions were a mix of Paper IV and Paper III syllabi. We had no choice but to go ahead and start writing," said a student of a college in south Calcutta.

Sujit Kumar Barua, the controller of examinations at Calcutta University, said preliminary questions of Paper III syllabus were included in Paper IV because of "negligence" at the time of printing the Paper IV question paper.

"This is not a paper leak. Never before have we come across such a situation. The university will conduct a through investigation to find out how the questions of Paper III syllabus got included in Paper IV. But this should not have happened," Barua said.

The university detected the mistake minutes after the exam began and posted a notice on its website within 10 minutes, announcing the cancellation of today's paper.

"It is notified for information of all concerned that the examination in Bengali (BNGA) Paper-IV at B.A Part-II (Honours) Examination, 2017, scheduled today i.e. on 05/06/2017, stands postponed due to unavoidable circumstances. The revised schedule of the said examination shall be announced in due course," the notice said.