The Tamil Nadu School Education Department has on Tuesday suspended Tiruvannamalai Chief Educational Officer S Arulselvam from service with immediate effect in connection to the shocking leakage of the revision exam papers for Class 10 and 12. The exam papers were leaked on Sunday and they were circulated on WhatsApp groups.

According to reports, Arulselvam was suspended after a probe identified that the question papers of Class 10 Science and Class 12 Mathematics were leaked from two private schools in the Tiruvannamalai district. After the leak came to light, the school education department has initiated a probe following which it came to the revelation that two schools - Auxilium Matriculation Higher Secondary School in Polur and Hasini International Matriculation Higher Secondary School in Vandavasi were responsible for the test paper leak. 

It has been reported that the schools were identified based on the seals of the test papers. Following the leak, the education officials in the district had filed a complaint with the Ponnur police. The probe by the department has found that Arulselvam had violated the rules for the distribution of question papers after which it had placed him under suspension. 

As per the SOP, the Chief Educational Officer has to store the exam papers for both classes 10 and 12 in district strong rooms and must dispatch the papers to the schools on the day of examination. However, the authorities have said that instead of locking up the papers in the strong rooms, Arulselvam had directly handed over the test papers to the schools, which had then leaked over WhatsApp groups. 

Arulselvam has been replaced by Krishnapriya, who is also serving as the Chief Educational Officer for the Villupuram district. She will be executing the role as CEO of Tiruvannamalai as an additional responsibility. The reports say that the school education department will further initiate criminal action against those responsible for leaking the question papers. 

School Education Commissioner K Nanthakumar has said that all government officials who did not follow the guidelines will also face departmental action. It is pertinent to note that the Tamil Nadu School Education Department is conducting a common revision test across the state to prepare students for the board exam. Should the board exams for Class 10 and 12 in 2022 be cancelled due to the pandemic, the marks obtained by the students in these revision exams will be taken into account.