Supreme Court To Hear Petition Seeking Cancellation Of Offline Board Exams By CBSE, ICSE, State Boards

The Supreme Court of India today (21 February) admitted to hear a writ petition filed by child rights activist Anubha Shrivastava Sahai. The plea seeks directions from the apex court to the State Boards, Central Board of School Education (CBSE), Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE), National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) who are planning to conduct board exams for students in offline mode this year.

CBSE issued a circular last week on Wednesday (16 February) which stated that “The board after discussions with various stakeholders and taking into consideration the Covid-19 pandemic situation in the country, has decided to conduct the Term 2 examination in offline mode. The Term 2 theory examinations will commence from 26 April 2022.”

Last year, due to second wave of Covid-19 pandemic, CBSE had tweaked the assessment system and divided it in two terms. The Term 1 exams consisting of objective type questions were to be completed in November and December followed by Term 2 exams which were supposed to have subjective questions. With improvement in the pandemic situation, the board decided to conduct the Term 2 exams in offline manner.

The writ petition was mentioned for urgent hearing by Advocate-on-Record Prashant Padmanabhan before CJI NV Ramana who listed it before the bench of Justice AM Khanwilkar whose bench had dealt with the petitions related to board exams in 2021.

“Students in all the States are very worried about conducting the 10th and 12th board examination due to high rate of growth of COVID-19 cases in all over Country along with the high possibility of 3rd wave which will affect the students very badly, and also due to incompletion of course in this pandemic situation.In most of the States during the lockdown period of June –December,2020 no classes were provided to Students. Almost 98% of colleges/schools of all the States had not conducted any online class for Students in that period. Looking into the matter the most of State Government & Education department of has declared for 100 days offline class for students and will conduct exams after 100 days offline classes. The government said the students have to bring "NO OBJECTION CERTIFICATE" signed by parents to join offline classes. But most of the parents were unable to allow their child for offline classes in the pandemic,” (sic) the petition states.

The petition sought urgent interim relief from the court by issuing directions to the governments as Madhya Pradesh Government started commencing board exams for class X and XII from 17 February.