The Central Board of Secondary Education on Saturday declared the results for Class 12 examinations. The overall pass percentage is 83.01%, a rise of nearly 1% from the 2017 academic year, the board announced.

Meghna Srivastava from Step by Step School in Noida topped the examinations. Anoushka Chandra of Ghaziabad’s SAJ School and Chahat Bodhraj from Jaipur’s Neerja Modi School bagged the second and third positions.

Trivandrum was the top-performing region with a pass percentage of 97.32, followed by Chennai with 93.87% and Delhi with 89%, the board said in a press release. Girls performed better than boys, 78.99% of whom cleared the examination, with an overall pass percentage of 88.31.

Students can check their results on cbse.nic.in, cbseresults.nic.in, and results.nic.in. Candidates can also check their results through Microsoft’s app SMS Organiser, according to a statement released by the tech company. Students will have to register with their roll number, school code and the date of birth to be able to access their marks.

Students can also check their CBSE results via text message using these numbers: 52001 (MTNL), 57766 (BSNL), 5800002 (Aircel), 55456068 (Idea), 54321, 51234 and 5333300 (Tata Teleservices), 54321202 (Airtel), and 9212357123 (National Informatics Centre).

Exams marred by leaks

More than 11 lakh students appeared for the Class 12 exams, which began on March 5 and concluded on April 25. They were initially expected to get over by April 12 but had to be extended after the Class 12 Economics paper was leaked. The board had confirmed in April that the results would not be delayed due to the re-examination.

There were leaks in both the Class 12 and 10 CBSE examination papers, but the board decided against a re-test for the Class 10 students as it was an “internal segment” of education system. Students had carried out protests in Delhi and several other parts of the country demanding action against the culprits and claimed that the board has been negligent.

The leak of the Class 12 exam paper came to light when an envelope containing a hand-written economics paper was delivered to the CBSE office in Delhi on the evening of the day of exam, March 26. The CBSE then rescheduled the exam, setting a new date of April 25, and tried to email the encrypted question paper to the schools directly.

The Delhi Police said the leak occurred on March 23, three days before the scheduled examination. Investigators have made multiple arrests in several parts of the country. Three alleged conspirators who were integral to the leak, it is claimed, are from Una in Himachal Pradesh. The three main accused are employees of a school in the town.