CBSE plaint for circulating fake news about JEE-Main paper

The CBSE has filed a complaint with the Delhi Police against a website, accusing its owner of running "a fake news" that some of the questions of this year's Joint Entrance Examination's (JEE) Physics paper were identical to those listed in a model question paper of a Hyderabad-based coaching institute in 2016.

It has lodged the case against the owner of the website, 'http://cisthetaglobal.com/', after its news item about the JEE-Main paper went viral on various social media sites and was picked up by many news portals on Wednesday, prompting the CBSE to issue a clarification that the news was "false and baseless".

"The CBSE has taken serious cognizance of the situation and filed a written complaint for lodging FIR against the website owner of cisthetaglobal.com with the DCP (Crime) Delhi police headquarters," the board said.

The website claimed that 7-8 questions out of the 90 questions of the JEE-Main Physics paper, held recently, were carried from a 2016 model paper of Narayana Coaching Academy.

"These questions or items did not exist in 2016. The spokesperson of Narayana Coaching Academy has also informed the CBSE that the images (of the questions) displayed on the website did not belong to them," the CBSE said.

The board clarified that the questions were "originally" written only about two to three months back.

"They cannot and could not have figured in any model paper by any coaching institutions two years back. There is an atmosphere of falsities and rumour-mongering being deliberately perpetuated against a prestigious organisation like CBSE," the board said.

Explaining the procedure, the CBSE's spokesperson Rama Sharma said the JEE question papers are prepared in original by over 100 item writers who are experts in the subject.

"They prepare over 1,500 items over a period of two months during the year of the examination. All these questions are prepared by item writers in original and they are handwritten," she said.

The final handwritten version was ready only about 2-3 months back, after which it was sent to the confidential printer.

"It is indeed very strange that the handwritten changes in all these 7 questions that the CBSE has record of, appear exactly in a so-called website claiming to belong to a particular coaching institute and also claiming they are two years old," Sharma said.

The board said a representative of the "so-called" website, when approached, refused to take any responsibility of the false news item published by it.