The teachers and students described the Class 12 CBSE Biology paper as tricky and moderately difficult. However one question about cremation practices in the paper led to people questioning the HRD minister.
The question under Section D was based on air pollution and asked students to justify with arguments whether one should “bury” or “burn” to control air pollution.
“How is this question relevant to Biology? Does the CBSE wants to promote burial and not burning? They even asked impressionable minds to give reasons in support,” said Alok Bhatt who tagged the question paper to the HRD minister Prakash Javadekar on Twitter.
Teachers, however, said air pollution is a part of the Biology syllabus. They said most questions in the paper were from the NCERT textbook.
A section worth 10 to 12 marks required analysis. Similarly, the value based questions also required analysis by the students. Some questions were repeated from last year’s CBSE paper.
“The paper can be classified as an average one with tricky questions worth at least 10 to 12 marks. If a student had studied comprehensively, she would have answered the 3-mark and 5-mark questions in the paper,” said Shruti Gupta, Biology teacher at Evergreen Senior Secondary School.
