ALLAHABAD: Over 7.42 lakh students were reported absent on the first day of UP Board's high school and intermediate examinations on Thursday. UP Madhyamik Shiksha Parishad officials claimed that online registration and introduction of a mobile app to check copying resulted in so many examinees not taking the exams.The board's high school and intermediate exams are the largest in the world, with nearly 68 lakh examinees.On Friday, when data from 11,667 centres reached the board office in Allahabad, officials found that 2,88,000 Class XII students and 4,54,000 Class X students had not appeared.Most students were absent in Meerut and Ghazipur districts (36,000 each), followed by Bareilly and Ballia (34,000), Allahabad (32,000) and Agra (22,000). Lucknow reported 4,500 absentees and Varanasi, 10,700. Division-wise, most absentees were in Bareilly followed by Allahabad, Lucknow and Meerut."The figure was a shocker since on the very first day 7,42,000 students - accounting for around 11% - left the examinations," UP Madhyamik Siksha Parishad deputy secretary Arvind Pandey told TOI."It's assumed that the majority of these students had registered online with the help of the 'copy' mafia. Earlier, they used to register manually from several schools and managed to pass from one school." He said the introduction of attendance software - though it didn't work - also kept non-serious students away from exam centres.