From 371,054 students in 2016-17, the number of enrollments dropped to 273,027 in 2017-18. This number is almost the same as that of students declared pass in the previous year: a total of 262,076 students were successful in 2016-17, while 38,841 failed and 70,007 were absent. The results for the 2018 batch are expected in a week.

"The primary job of the board is to conduct fair exams. We single-mindedly focussed on this," said Garg.

"We also cracked down on cheating. We want the students to compulsorily study to earn their degrees," she said.

A side-effect of the exercise was that the board, that operates under the Department of Minorities Welfare & Waqf of the state government, ended up saving a hundred crore rupees.

Here's how: there were 19,123 madrassas officially affiliated to the madrassa board, but only 18,225 registered through the website. The rest (introduced by the media as "fake") could be non-existent and did not share the details. Of the total 18,225 madrassas, 560 are grant-in-aid, in which the entire expenditure is borne by the government; some 8,534 are attached to the madrassa modernisation scheme, where they get financial assistance from the government; and 140 of them have industrial training units running in them.

While the officials were unable to provide an estimation of the annual state expenditure on the madrassas, the figure is at least 560 crores, as each grant-in-aid madrassa gets an estimated Rs 1 crore from the government. Another Rs 400 crore is set aside for modernisation of the madrassas that is used from the minorities’ development fund.

The transparency has also benefited the estimated 33,000 teachers who had no job security. Now, their details are recorded with the department so the madrassa committees can't fire them on their whims.

"There were cases where a madrassa manager would replace the entire team of teachers with his new relatives after getting his son or daughter married. Every other day, the teachers would hold protests outside our office," the official said.

The officials said that even if a section of the Muslim community continues to be skeptic, most madrassas have embraced the change. "It has had a positive social impact. The madrassas feel the government is doing something for them," Rahul Gupta, registrar of the board, said.

These are some important reforms and the media coverage has been wide. However, the coverage has been limited to the madrassa board. The corresponding efforts in the Uttar Pradesh Board of Secondary Sanskrit Education Council have gone nearly unnoticed.

In fact, in a January meeting of minority welfare ministers of nine states with Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had turned down the suggestion by UP Shia Waqf Board chief Wasim Rizvi to “shut down all madrassas”, and instead, suggested modernisation as the solution for both madrassas and Sanskrit vidyalayas.