The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has decided to retain its old system of conducting class X and XII board exams via the usual hard copy question papers, reports Times of India.

To stop the examination paper leaks, the CBSE had conducted a successful pilot of double encrypted question papers during the class X compartmental exams in July 2018. The papers were mailed to the examination centres 30 minutes before the exam started and then printed in the centre itself. Since the question papers have centre details, in case of leaks, the source can be tracked.

However, the board has decided to use this method only as a backup option in 2019 exams, calling it an “emergency” measure.

The vocational courses' exams will start from February 2019, and the academic subject exams will begin in March 2019. The government will deliver the papers to the exam centres following the conventional procedure.

A senior HRD official said that while the board was considering applying the new procedure for vocational students, as they are less in number, the idea was shelved later on. He added that several other security measures have been taken.

He stated that the double encryption system is not feasible at present since many remote area schools did't have the required facilities, adding that in a centre with 1,000 candidates, it was impossible to print 16,000 pages of paper in half an hour. “However, there is a second set of double encrypted papers that will be kept as a backup,” he said.