Rajasthan's Class 10th paper a comedy of errors

Class X students of government schools here taking the district-level English exam faced a crisis of comprehension as they attempted the paper’s ‘reading section’.

In a passage on PM Narendra Modi, he was described as a “croad puller (crowd-puller)” and a reference made to his skills as a “spoker (speaker)”. His party’s symbol is spelt “lotoaus (lotus)”. Further on, the passage dwells on “voilence (violence)”, “Gujrat (Gujarat)”, the “Rastrapati Bhawan (Rashtrapati Bhavan)”.

The mistakes don’t end here. The sentences in the comprehension section each stretched to 50-60 words.


District education officials termed the mistakes “routine ones that occur in every question paper”. “Do the Rajasthan Public Service Commission (RPSC), the Rajasthan Board of Secondary Education (RBSE) and other examination bodies not make mistakes? If they can make such mistakes, we are just a district-level body. It’s OK,” district education officer-II Jaipur Ram Ratan said.

According to rules, question papers have to be prepared by subject experts. An examination committee then picks one question paper from three to five on the basis of its questions and language.

“If this can happen in Jaipur, we can imagine the situation in other districts” said Kishan Mittal, secretary of Swayamsewi Shikshan Sanstnan, an organisation of private schools affiliated with the state education department.