Prayagraj, Nov 9 (IANS): For the first time, nearly 58 lakh students registered to appear in the Uttar Pradesh Board high school and intermediate examinations 2023 across the state will get stitched answer sheets.

The move of the Uttar Pradesh Madhyamik Shiksha Parishad (UPMSP), is aimed at preventing the copy mafia from deliberately changing answer sheets of meritorious students at different exam centres as witnessed in the previous years, said state secondary education department officials.

According to the official spokesman, the decision has been taken after the board's experiment to provide stitched answer sheets to 10 sensitive districts, where such practices were feared in 2020, yielded desired results.

A total of 58,67,329 students, including 31,16,458 of high school and 27,50,871 of intermediate, will be appearing for the 2023 exams.

The step is also aimed at further making examinations free of unfair means.

In the earlier examinations, the copying mafia used to take out the cover page of the usual stapled answer sheets of meritorious students at the centres and put it on the copies of the weaker students in lieu of cash, after the examination was over.

In many such cases, the Board has acted against centre managers and teachers besides debarring the guilty schools from the examination over such incidents.

To prevent this, it had started providing stitched answer sheets to select districts where such practices were reported in 2020.

These districts include Mathura, Prayagraj, Muzaffarnagar, Hardoi, Ballia, Jaunpur, Azamgarh, Aligarh, Ghazipur and Kaushambhi.

The spokesman said that this year, the Board has requested officers of the Government Press that only sewed copies be supplied to all 75 districts.