More than four lakh students have dropped out on the first day of the UP Board examinations for Classes 10 and 12.

The exam began on Thursday. As per reports received at the UP Board headquarters from the 75 districts, as many as 2,18,189 students out of the total registered 31,14,224 skipped the exam in the first shift itself.

Those who remained absent in the first shift included 2,17,702 out of 31,08,584 of high school and 487 out of the total registered 5,640 intermediate students.

In the second shift also, 1,83,865 intermediate students out of the total registered 25,80,544 skipped the exam taking the total to 4,02,054.

Board secretary Divyakant Shukla said that the strict anti-copying measures undertaken on the orders of the state government led to four lakh students skipping the exam on the very first day.

On the first day itself, a total of nine proxy candidates were nabbed, five in Ghazipur and one each in Mathura, Jaunpur, Bulandshahr and Lucknow.

“FIRs are being registered against these nine individuals,” board officials said.

A total of 11 students were also caught cheating in the exam on the first day. Seven boys and three girls of high school and one boy of intermediate were caught, officials added.

In the first shift, FIR was registered against Yogendra Yadav, principal of Shri Suchit Nandan Inter College, Vishanpura of Ghazipur for facilitating use of unfair means in the exam.

The state government had deputed police as well as personnel of the local intelligence unit (LIU) and special task force (STF) of the state police for smooth and fair conduct of the exams.

To ensure copying does not take place, CCTV cameras, with 3 lakh voice recorders have been installed in 1.43 lakh examination rooms of all 8,753 examination centres across the state that include 540 government institutions, and 3,523 private and 4,690 unaided colleges.

Online monitoring of the exam centres is also being done from the control room set up in the District School Inspector’s offices besides a central state-level control room in Lucknow.

A total of 170 jailed prisoners are also registered to appear in the UP Board exams this year. Of them, 79 are registered to write the high school exam while 91 will take intermediate exam.