LAHORE, April 14: Punjab Education Minister Mian Imran Masud has said that comprehensive arrangements had been made for the matriculation examinations of the eight boards of education in the province which begin on April 20.

“Monitoring teams have been constituted at provincial, board and district level to monitor 2,422 centres,” an official release quoted him as saying on Friday.

The minister was presiding over a high-level meeting which reviewed measures taken for holding the exams. Masud said monitoring teams would take legal action against candidates involved in the use of unfair means and hand them over to the police.

The meeting was informed that 777,144 candidates would appear in the exams to be conducted by the eight boards, with Bahawalpur board hosting 53,803, DG Khan 42,267, Faisalabad 96,696, Gujranwala 146,291, Lahore 176,562, Multan 96,020, Rawalpindi 107,074 and Sargodha 58,431 candidates.

A provincial monitoring cell has also been set up in the education department which will report daily to the chief minister and the education minister.

The meeting was further informed that a special squad comprising reputed teachers had been established which would monitor examination activities in their districts. All board chairmen had been given judicial powers who could hear unfair means cases and punish offenders on the spot.