The Delhi High Court has requested a response from the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) concerning a public interest litigation that alleges widespread irregularities and technical failures within the board’s On-Screen Marking (OSM) system. This system is utilized for the evaluation of Class 12 answer sheets.
Information was available with The Chenab Times that a Division Bench, comprising Justices Neena Bansal Krishna and Madhu Jain, issued a notice to the CBSE on Monday and scheduled the matter for further hearing on June 12.
During the court proceedings, counsel representing the CBSE opposed the petition, asserting that it was politically motivated and lacked maintainability. Advocate M A Niyazi, appearing for the board, informed the court that the CBSE had been actively engaging with students and had extended the deadlines for verification and re-evaluation on multiple occasions.
Mr. Niyazi submitted that as it was a Public Interest Litigation, there was no immediate urgency. He further argued that the petitioner, the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), was the student wing of a political party and contended that education should not be politicized.
Counsel for the NSUI countered this argument by drawing the court’s attention to previous instances where similar petitions filed by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing affiliated with the Bharatiya Janata Party, had been entertained by the courts.
The petition, filed through NSUI president Vinod Jhakhar, seeks judicial direction for the award of compensatory marks to students whose answer sheets were reportedly missing, blurred, mismatched, or incorrectly evaluated. It also calls for an independent inquiry into the alleged large-scale irregularities, technical deficiencies, and failures in the grievance redressal mechanism of the OSM system.
Furthermore, the plea requests a manual rechecking and physical verification of answer sheets in instances where students dispute the accuracy of the scanned copies or the evaluation process itself. The NSUI has also urged the court to direct the CBSE to extend the duration for which its verification and re-evaluation portal remains open by an additional month, allowing affected students more time to pursue necessary remedies.
The petition highlights that the Class 12 results are of paramount importance for university admissions, scholarship opportunities, and entry into professional courses. Consequently, any errors in the evaluation process could have a detrimental impact on students’ academic futures and career prospects. Students, parents, and educators from across the country have reportedly raised concerns about issues such as blurred scanned answer sheets, missing pages, incomplete uploads, and mismatches of answer sheets. Additionally, numerous students have reported unexpectedly low scores upon the declaration of results.
The petitioner contends that these widespread complaints are indicative of systemic flaws within the OSM system rather than being isolated incidents. The NSUI argues that the integrity and accuracy of the evaluation process are crucial for maintaining fairness and ensuring that students receive results that accurately reflect their academic performance.
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