The Madhya Pradesh government has postponed the Class 10 and 12 board exam due in May due to a spike in Covid-19 cases, news agency PTI reported on Wednesday.

In a circular shared by the MP School Education Department on Twitter, the Madhya Pradesh Board of Secondary Education (MPBSE) said exams of the high school, higher secondary and diploma in pre-school education (vocational course) that were scheduled to begin from April 30 and May 1 are now postponed by one month.

The exams are likely to be conducted in the month of June, MPBSE indicated. The new exam schedule will be posted on its website mpbse.nic.in soon.

The MP government has declared summer holidays for students of Classes 1 to 8 from April 15 to June 13 keeping in mind the safety and health of students, state School Education Minister Indar Singh Parmar said according to PTI report.

On Tuesday, Madhya Pradesh reported 8,998 new cases of coronavirus, a record since the pandemic began last year, pushing the infection count to 3,53,632. The Covid-19 fatality count rose to 4,261 with 40 more deaths reported on Tuesday.

Last week, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra also declared their respective boards are postponing Class 10 and 12 exams amid the second wave of Covid-19.

There has been a rising demand for the postponement of CBSE board exams that will be held in an offline mode from May 4 to June 7 for Class 10 and from May 4 to June 15 for Class 12. Students have protested against the exams, and over one lakh of them have signed a petition and sent it to the CBSE in this regard.