It had been reported that nine hours before the Class 10 math exam, the education board CBSE received a copy of the handwritten question paper by email. The Education Secretary, however, explained recently why the exam was not scrapped straight away.

Education Secretary Anil Swarup stated, “The mail came at 1.29 am on March 28 (early Wednesday) but the mail was seen at 8.55 am by the CBSE chairman. The paper was sent for verification. Just because there was an alert, we couldn't have stopped the exam.”

He added that the math exam began at 10 am and “could not practically be stopped. Putting the children at an inconvenience at some fellow's message who might be playing a trick, we could not have done that.”