SC dismisses plea against offline board exams
The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a plea for cancelling offline exams for Class X and XII proposed to be conducted by CBSE, ICSE, and NIOS and all other state boards.
A three-judge bench presided over by Justice A M Khanwilkar pulled up petitioners for filing "premature and ill-conceived" petitions and "creating confusion" among lakhs of students. The court also warned of exemplary costs if such action is repeated.
Advocate Prashant Padmanabhan, appearing for petitioners Anubha Shrivastava Sahai and others, cited CBSE directions and asked the court to consider the petition filed in connection with the exams last year.
However, the bench, also comprising Justices Dinesh Maheshwari and C T Ravikumar, said what has happened in past cannot become a norm.
The counsel claimed the CBSE has conducted first term exam in offline mode in December 2021 in multiple choice questions mode but results have not been published.
The court said the authorities should be allowed to take a decision in the matter.
“How can you pre-empt everything”, said the bench. These kinds of petitions are misleading, what kind of publicity these petitions get. These petitions create confusion. Let students and authorities do their jobs," the bench said.
Advocate Sahai, who filed the plea, claimed many students studying in CBSE, ICSE, NIOS and state boards were aggrieved by the decision for physical examinations.
She claimed the mental pressure, created for performance in the board exam is so much that every year a number of students commit suicide for fear of under-performance, or of failure.
"To make the students appear and face examination with the additional fear of getting infected by the Covid-19 virus will not only be unfair but the same will be absolutely inhuman," it claimed.
The plea asked the court to issue directions to concerned authorities for alternate mode of assessment of students from Classes 10, 11, and 12 of CBSE, ICSE, NIOS and state boards instead of offline exams.
It also pleaded for conducting an improvement exam for those who are not satisfied with internal assessment and further order to constitute a committee to decide the formula of assessment of students, including compartment students and declare the result within a time limit and deadline.
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