CBSE class 10, 12 board exams: SC rejects plea on cancellation of offline exams

The Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a plea seeking cancellation of offline exams for Class X and XII to be conducted by all State Boards, CBSE, ICSE and National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS).

In its order, the apex court added that these kinds of petitions are misleading and give false hope to students.

"Such petitions give false hope to the persons who are going to appear in the examinations. Those students will be misled by this petition. Let the authorities take decision. If the decision is wrong, challenge that decision. Here, you want to pre-empt everything," a bench headed by Justice A M Khanwilkar told the lawyer appearing for the petitioners, reported news agency PTI.

"This creates not only false hopes, it creates confusion all over to students who are preparing," said the bench, also comprising Justices Dinesh Maheshwari and C T Ravikumar.

The plea had sought directions to the CBSE and other education boards, which have proposed to hold board examinations for classes 10 and 12 in offline mode, to devise alternate modes of assessment.

The CBSE has decided to conduct term two board exams for class 10 and class 12 from April 26. The plea was mentioned before the bench on Tuesday for urgent listing and the court had said that it would hear the matter on Wednesday.

The counsel, appearing for the petitioners, had told the bench that the apex court had passed orders in 2020 and 2021 regarding class 10 and 12 board exams and this year also, the same problem is there.

On June 17 last year, the top court had approved the assessment schemes of the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) and the CBSE, which had adopted the 30:30:40 formula for evaluation of marks for students of 12th standard based on results of class 10, 11 and 12 respectively.

(With inputs from PTI)