CBSE, CISCE class 12 board exam plea in Supreme Court, BIG takeaways for students

The Supreme Court on Monday asked the government to come up with tangible reasons if it plans to conduct the pending class 12 board exam 2021 in offline mode. While hearing a petition seeking directions to cancel CBSE and CISCE class 12 exams in the wake of coronavirus pandemic, a bench of Justices A M Khanwilkar and Dinesh Maheshwari said that if the Centre decides to depart from the last year’s policy, wherein the remaining board exams were canceled due to the pandemic, then it must give tangible reasons for it.

Noting that the last year’s decision was taken after deliberations, the apex court said, “If you are departing from that policy, please give us good reasons so that we can examine it”. Justices Khanwilkar and Maheshwari made the remarks after Attorney General KK Venugopal, representing the Centre, informed the court that the government will take a final decision within the next two days on whether to conduct class 12 board exams amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

Venugopal said that last year, board exams for some papers were over before the COVID-19 induced national lockdown was imposed in March 2020. To this, the bench observed, “We don’t want to go into the nitty-gritty at this stage. You take the decision. Hope has been expressed by the petitioner that the policy adopted last year can be adopted this year too.”

Notably, last year, amid the pandemic the Supreme Court had asked boards to determine and declare Class XII exam results on the basis of earlier assessment of students. On June 26, 2020, the top court had approved the schemes of the CBSE and CISCE for cancellations of remaining board examinations scheduled from July 1 to 15 last year due to the outbreak of corona. It had also approved their formula for the assessment of candidates.

During the hearing, petitioner Advocate Mamta Sharma raised the issue of difficulty that students, who wish to study abroad after class 12, might face in case the results are delayed. “The Process needs to be expedited, else students who wish to apply abroad will face problem in managing”, she told the bench.

Later while talking to a leading news channel, Sharma reiterated that exams can never supersede the lives of students.

To this, the court said, “Let them take the decision. Depending on that, we will see. We will consider this on Thursday when the in-principle decision is placed before us, the bench said.”

Last month, the CBSE had cancelled class 10 exams and postponed class 12 exams in view of the unprecedented surge in coronavirus cases.