Chaos reigned at a few Central Board of Secondary Education examination centres in New Delhi on Monday after they did not receive the question papers for the Class 12 Hindi Core exam and the Class 10 Sanskrit exam in time. The exams were scheduled to begin at 10.15 am but began late.

The principal and centre superintendent at one such centre told Scroll. in at around 10 am that they had taken candidates to a side campus as they could not let them into the exam halls till they received the question papers. Till 9.30 am, the centres had neither received the new encrypted question papers nor the printed ones. CBSE officials too had not reached the banks by 9.30 am to collect the question papers, unidentified officials said. The CBSE office was also not responding to their phone calls, they added.

On Saturday, a number of centre superintendents wrote to the CBSE telling them they did not have the capacity to download the encrypted question papers and print 6,500 plus sheets. They told the board that they should not be held responsible if something goes wrong. The next evening, CBSE officials told the schools that the question papers could be collected from banks as well.

This came after the CBSE, on Friday, told examination centres it would email a link to the question papers, a system it had tested the day before. It had instructed schools to ensure they can print over 2,000 sheets of paper between 7.15 am, when the email would be sent, and 10.15 am on Monday, when the students begin writing the exams. The new instructions had some government schools housing the exam centres in Delhi worried.