Ajmer, Nov. 14 -- The Board of Secondary Education, Rajasthan (BSER), has redesigned its answer booklets in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, increasing the number of assessment columns on the first page from 36 to 40 to accommodate the revised question paper format, officials aware of the matter said on Friday. The Board has printed around 100 million new answer booklets for the upcoming Class 10 and 12 examinations and directed district education authorities to return their existing stocks of the old-format booklets. Board secretary Kailash Chandra Sharma said the revised question papers would contain more questions than before, necessitating additional columns for recording marks during evaluation. The new answer booklets will have 40 assessment columns, four more than the earlier format, he said. The Board has asked all district education officers to send back the old-format answer books stored in their respective districts to ensure that only the revised versions are used in the forthcoming examinations. The changes are part of a broader overhaul of the Rajasthan Board's examination system under NEP 2020. More than 2 million students have registered for the Class 10 and 12 examinations this year, including over 1.2 million Class 10 candidates and more than 800,000 Class 12 candidates. The Board has also introduced two examination opportunities for Class 10 students. Appearing in the first examination will be compulsory, while students seeking to improve their scores can appear in the second examination in a maximum of three subjects. In another major change, the Board has adopted 11 parameters under the PARAKH framework for question paper preparation, replacing the earlier system based on four to five key considerations. Around 300 teachers from across Rajasthan have undergone specialised training to prepare question papers under the revised framework. Sharma said the changes were aimed at aligning the examination process with the requirements of the new education policy....