Kolkata: Rumours of the leakage of a question paper of the ongoing West Bengal Secondary School Examination caused panic among thousands of students appearing for the exam past noon today (Mar 15, 2004) even as the Board firmly denied any such incident.

Rumours started doing the rounds after the official commencement of the mathematics examination of the board at 12:00 noon when a national television channel claimed to have obtained a copy of the question paper from an anonymous source.

However, Board president Dibyendu Hota outrightly rejected any possibility of a leakage saying none of his team of visiting invigilators across the State had reported any leakage at any of the centres more than an hour into the examination.

"The photocopy of the question paper that the television channel has sent to me has many questions common to our original question paper but the format is not ours. How can you call this a leak?" he asked.

Hota did not rule out the possibility of someone smuggling out a copy of the question paper after the examination began to produce a similar paper with the malafide intention of causing panic among students.