According to sources, the West Bengal government has been asked to provide a factual report about a sample question paper for class 10 that asks pupils to mark “Azad Kashmir” on a map. According to a source, “the ministry has taken a serious view of press reports on the model question paper for the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education’s class 10 examination 2022–23 requesting the students to locate “Azad Kashmir” on India’s map.”
The source continued, “The ministry has requested a factual report as well as an Action Taken Report from the Education Department of West Bengal in relation to the test paper.” The class 10 model question paper’s appearance on social media on Tuesday sparked a political dispute in West Bengal, with the opposition BJP calling it a “jihadi conspiracy” and the state’s ruling TMC calling it an error that it does not condone.
Candidates for the Madhyamik exam were given a question paper in their exercise book that asked them to locate several locations on a map, including the Chittagong battleground, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (also known as “Azad Kashmir” in Pakistan), and the location where Gandhiji launched the Satyagraha movement.
Ramanuj Ganguly, the head of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education, had acknowledged that the test paper produced by the independent organisation contained a “goof-up,” and he added that appropriate action was being taken against those involved. The incident, if real, might be ascribed to “appeasement politics of the TMC-run government which has emboldened some persons to introduce a question with anti-national undertones in the test paper,” according to Union Minister of Education for State Subhas Sarkar on Tuesday.
