Cuttack: The results of the annual High School Certificate (HSC) examination conducted by the Odisha Board of Secondary Education (BSE) was declared today by School and Mass Education Minister Badri Narayan Patra at the board's office here around 9 am.

While 5,54,339 students had appeared the exam, 76.23 percent of them have passed, the minister said. The percentage has declined by significant margin as compared to last year's 85.28.

A total of 1,715 students have secured A1 grade, 15,689 students A2 grade, 39252 students B1 grade, 68009 students B2 grade, 97746 students C grade and 123763 candidates have secured D grade.

Girls have outshined boys in the exam as a total of 2,22,043 girl students have passed as compared to 2,16,305 boys.

Highest pass percentage of 88.15 has been recorded in Balasore district while Malkangiri district has the lowest pass percentage with 59.32.

As many as 429 schools have achieved 100 percent result while 36 schools registered nil results.

Students can log on to www.bseodisha.nic.in and www.bseodisha.ac.in to know their results.

To know the results through SMS, students need to type OR10 and send it to 5676750.

Scanned copies of the OMR answer sheets will be available on www.bseodisha.ac.in.

The board has opened a control room which will operate for seven days from the date of announcement of results. Parents or students can contact on the control room numbers– (0671) 2412059/2412060 during working hours from 10 am to 5 pm for any queries.

Notably, the evaluation of answer sheets started at 57 centres across the state on March 20 and concluded on April 4. The BSE had engaged 13,285 teachers for the purpose.

The annual examination which was held between February 23 and March 8.