STUDENTS APPEARING FOR ENGLISH ON FIRST DAY OF SLC EXAMINATION THAT BEGAN THURSDAY Kathmandu, 14 March: Students Thursday morning at eight began writing answers for English at SLC examination centers nationwide. The nine-day annual examination will be conducted every day for four hours. nnnn DETAILS OF SLC EXAMS Kathmandu, 14 March:: A total of 430,097 regular and 117, 068 exempted students are going to appear in the SLC exam across the country from Thursday, The Rising Nepal reports.. The Office of the Controller of Examination (OCE) has set up a total of 1,786 exam centers across the nation, where 1,786 superintendents, 2,655 assistant superintendents, 21,890 invigilators, 7,297 helpers and 19,860 security personnel will be deployed to conduct the examinations successfully and in a fair manner. The violators of the examination rules will be imprisoned for maximum six months period and fined up to Rs. 100,000 under the Secondary Education Send-up Examination Operation and Management Directives - 2068. The OCE has appealed to all not to call any strike during the examination period. Meanwhile, 11 student unions have called off their protest programmes, keeping the SLC exams into account. The OCE has come up with a novel idea called ‘Notice Board Service’ to correct any mistake and omission in the question papers immediately during the exam hours. The OCE has introduced the service with the aim to make the question papers errorless. As per the service, every superintendent of each examination center would be informed through the OCE’s specially designed notice board number 1618016631146 within half an hour of such corrections in the beginning of the exam. The examination will be conducted from 8:00 am to 11:00 am, and the compulsory English is on the first day. According to our Banke correspondent, more than 200 students have been restricted from participating in examination due to the lacks of their 75 per cent attendance in Class ten. Likewise, 154 students, who failed to pay fee in time, will be also barred from attending the exams. This year a total of 6,372 regular students and 1,595 exempted ones will sit for SLC exam from Banke Similarly, District Education Office, Morang has selected superintendents a day before the start of examination due to controversy over the sharing of the post among various political parties. As per the sharing, the DEO has allotted 15 superintends each to Nepali Congress, CPN- UML and UCPN Maoist, seven to private school, eight to Madhesi parties and three to others, Surya Dev Yadav, vice-chairman of the All Nepal Teachers’ Association, Morang said. The stakeholders of the district education argued that the examinations could not be conducted smoothly due to delay in the selection of superintendents. There is a provision that the DEO must select superintendents three days prior to the start of SLC exams. One superintendent of the district said now they were compelled to arrange seats for the examinees in a hurry. Out of 19, 618 students, who filled up their registration forms, 939 students have been disqualified. Upendra Dahal, under-secretary of Morang DEO, informed that majority of them have been disqualified due to double registration. Nnnn BIG DRUG HAUL FROM CAPITAL Kathmandu, 14 March:: The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) of Nepal Police Wednesday seized a huge cache of banned drugs and other controlled pharmaceutical drugs worth Rs. 4.2 million in the Nepalese market, The Rising Nepal reports.. A special squad of NCB seized a total of 2,226 pieces of different items of banned pharmaceutical drugs namely diazepam and buprenorphine and 13 kg of chares, an impure heroin, 51 kg of hashish and 110 grams of brown sugar. Speaking at a press conference, Rabindra Regmi, Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) of NCB said that the estimated local market value of the seized contraband costs Rs. 4.2 million in Nepal. DSP Regmi said that the bureau has also detained six drug peddlers involved in the smuggling of the seized contraband. Four of the drug peddlers were arrested in the capital and two others from Belahiya Municipality of Rupandehi district. The arrested drugs peddlers include -- Mohammad Faharukh Aalam, of Motihari district in India, Prakash Sunwar of Dodhara VDC-3 of Kanchanpur district, Sanjaya Kumar Jaiswal of Rautahat district, Ram Bahadur Waiba, of Makawanpur district, Shiva Prasad Gurung of Syanja district and Thar Bahadur Giri of Kaski district. Among the arrested drug peddlers, Aalam was one of the most top class drug peddlers who have been supplying drugs in Nepal for long years. “We have regarded the arrest of Aalam as qualitative arrest so far achieved in the arrest records of drug peddlers,” said DSP Regmi. Police have themselves become clients to buy the drugs that were going to be supplied by Aalam. Aalam was arrested red-handed from Koteshwore-35 along with 110 grams of brown sugar. Similarly, another arrested Prakash Sunar, was caught red-handed along with 1,540 pieces of banned pharmaceutical drugs (buprenorphine and diazepam) from TU Teaching Hospital gate, Maharajgunj-3. DSP Regmi said that anti-narcotic squad arrested Ram Bahadur Waiba for illegally possessing 51 kg of hashish and 13 kg of chares from Bandbhanjyang VDC-5 of Kathmandu district. Likewise, police have seized 82 pieces of pharmaceutical drugs from Shiva Prasad Gurung and another 254 pieces of pharmaceutical drugs from Thar Bahadur Giri. nnnnn NCB has been actively engaged in seizure of narcotics and detaining drug peddlers from its anti-narcotic squad deployed from its seven satellite offices and a head office located at Baneshwore. nnnn