Calcutta, March 10: The West Bengal Board of Secondary Education today apologised for spelling errors in yesterday’s Madhyamik English paper in an attempt to neutralise strong criticism about the mistakes and tough questions following the suicide by an examinee in West Midnapore.

Reports said Samir Mandal, 18, hanged himself from the ceiling of his bedroom in his Garbeta house yesterday, distraught over writing a “very bad English paper” — his words in a suicide note.

“I regret the errors which are due to careless printing,” said board president Dibyendu Hota. “But a mistake is a mistake. We feel sorry for the inconvenience caused to the examinees. It is unfortunate that the mistakes were overlooked by those assigned to set the papers.”

Among the glaring errors were words like “occurrence” and “occurring” spelt with a single “r”.

Asked if he would initiate action against those responsible, he said: “We have ordered a probe and nothing can be said until we finish the investigation.” He did not comment on the suicide.

Regarding complaints about “tough questions”, Hota said the paper will be placed before experts who will decide how to compensate the students.

“The head examiners will soon hold a meeting and examine whether the questions were really difficult or not. It depends on the head examiners to decide if it is necessary to evaluate the English answer scripts leniently,” Hota said.

The paper and Mandal’s death triggered an uproar in the Assembly today when Meena Sanatani, a CPM legislator, joined MLAs in the Suci and the Congress in criticising the board for the spelling errors. They also described the paper as “extraordinarily tough”.

Complaints also came from the CPM-controlled All Bengal Teachers’ Association which felt the paper was “too tough” for a majority of the students.

Hours after the examination yesterday, complaints from students and teachers started pouring into the board headquarters and its branch offices across Bengal. They alleged that while they were taught only simple poems and unseen passages in their classes, yesterday’s paper contained terms and phrases which students of the Class X level in the Madhyamik course are not expected to be familiar with.

For instance, the teachers alleged, many students could not understand terms like, “impish smile”, “original mind” and “lesser privileged”.