The Uttar Pradesh Board of High School and Intermediate Education on Sunday declared the results of the Class 10 and Class 12 examinations. The overall pass percentage for Class 12 was 72.43%, The Times of India reported.

Board Director Awadh Naresh Sharma said Rajneesh Shukla from Fatehpur and Akash Maurya from Barabanki had topped the examinations securing 466 marks each, ANI reported.

In Class 10, the overall pass percentage was 75.16%. Anjali Varma from Allahabad topped with 96.33%, News18 reported. The results can be accessed at upresults.nic.in.

Chief Minister Adityanath congratulated those who had cleared the examinations. “I am really happy that such a good result has come,” he said. “This time all the exams were held without any complaints of cheating.”

This year’s examinatiosn made the news after more than 1.8 lakh students did not appear for the Class 10 and 12 examinations on the first day, reportedly because of measures that the Adityanath government initiated to curb cheating. By February 26, over 10.6 lakh examinees in Classes 10 and 12 had dropped out across the state. More than 66 lakh students appeared for the tests.

The education department installed CCTV cameras in examination halls and used local intelligence agencies to check the activities of the education mafia before the examinations began on February 7. A Special Task Force of Uttar Pradesh Police busted a copying racket and arrested three individuals, including the headmaster of a school in Naini city.

Until 2017, students who registered for Class 10 and Class 12 state board exams, counted on a range of what they called “suvidhayen”, or facilities, to obtain marks without studying or even appearing for the exam, showed a Scroll.in series on the phenomenon of mass cheating in the state.

However, many teachers have complained that the government has only addressed the symptom and not the deeper malaise in the school system. They feel that government itself is responsible for the mass-scale cheating in the state. Most secondary education in Uttar Pradesh has been left in private hands and it is here that copying is most prevalent.