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The Supreme Court (SC) heard a plea regarding Class 12 board exams on Friday. The plea, filed by advocate Mamta Sharma, demands class 12 board exams be cancelled. The SC today adjourned the plea for Monday.
The matter came up for hearing before a bench of Justices A M Khanwilkar and Dinesh Maheshwari. At the outset, the bench asked petitioner Mamta Sharma whether she has served the copy of the plea to the counsel representing the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).
When the petitioner said she will serve the copy of the petition to the parties, the bench observed, “You do it. We will have it on Monday i.e May 31.”
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“We permit the counsel for the petitioner to serve an advance copy of the petition to respondents namely the central agency, counsel for the CBSE and the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examination,” the bench said.
The petition has arrayed the Centre, the CBSE and the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examination (CISCE) as respondents in the matter.
During the hearing conducted through video-conferencing, Justice Maheshwari observed that the CBSE is likely to take a call on this issue on June 1. The counsel representing the council for the Indian School Certificate Examination (ICSE) told the bench that since the apex court is hearing the matter, the high courts should not deal with it.
“In view of the unprecedented health emergency and rising numbers of the COVID-19 cases in the country, the conduct of examination, either offline or online or blended in upcoming weeks is not possible and delay in the examination will cause irreparable loss to the students as time is the essence in taking admission in higher education courses in foreign universities,” the plea read.
After attending the high-level meeting with the defence minister on May 23, in their feedback to the Education Ministry this week, as many as 32 states and Union Territories (UTs) have supported CBSE’s proposal to go ahead with the class 12 board examination, with only four — Delhi, Maharashtra, Goa, and Andaman & Nicobar — categorically opposing pen-and-paper examinations.
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Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Haryana, and Madhya Pradesh have requested the Union government not to introduce too many changes in the pattern of the question paper. — (With PTI inputs)
