The Centre on Friday assured the Supreme Court that the government was coming out with “some policy” to take care of the concerns of private candidates from war-hit West Asia whose CBSE Class XII results this year could not be declared because of the conflict in the Gulf.
Seeking adjournment of the matter for a few days, by which time the government hoped to offer a solution, solicitor-general Tushar Mehta urged a bench of Justices Augustine George Masih and Vijay Bishnoi to adjourn the matter to June 22.
“This is a wider issue. The government is considering laying down some policy for similarly situated students. I would urge that the matter may be kept for hearing on June 22,” Mehta told the bench, following which the hearing was adjourned.
The government’s top law officer requested the court during the hearing of a petition filed by Pransu Jigarkumar Patel, a student from Saudi Arabia, who had taken the Class XII 2025 board exams but wanted to improve his marks this year.
Patel’s petition stated that he appeared as a private candidate in the CBSE Class XII improvement examination in 2026 from Al Jubail in Saudi Arabia in physics, chemistry, mathematics, English and computer science. Patel claimed that his representations sent to the CBSE on May 17, May 21 and May 30 seeking a resolution of the issue went unanswered.
Patel moved the top court, complaining that the CBSE had failed to declare the results for overseas students despite its earlier assurance that an “assessment scheme” was being framed for students in the Gulf countries where this year’s CBSE exams were cancelled because of the ongoing US-Israel-Iran conflict.
The CBSE on May 13 declared the Class XII results for students in India.
Improvement exams are undertaken by some students to better their marks in different subjects in which they feel they had been awarded lower marks by the invigilator. In such cases, the students write improvement exams to increase their overall percentage marks so that they stand a better chance of qualifying for premier institutions like the IITs, IIMs, TOEFL,
or GMAT.
Patel wanted to know whether the CBSE’s proposed “assessment scheme” would apply to students like him who wanted to write their “improvement exams” but could not do so on account of the cancellation in the Gulf nations.
The student had pleaded that, according to the CBSE records, his status was shown as “RL (results later)”, causing anxiety to him and his family over his future appearance in other competitive examinations.
Following the escalating tensions in West Asia over the war, the CBSE had earlier cancelled its exams for students appearing from Bahrain, Kuwait, Iran, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and
the UAE.