Delhi High Court on Wednesday sought responses from the Centre and the CBSE on a petition filed by Congress’s student wing NSUI alleging large-scale irregularities in the on-screen marking (OSM) system in this year’s Class XII exams.
A vacation bench of Justices Neena Bansal Krishna and Madhu Jain issued notices to the Centre and the CBSE and asked them to file their responses before the next date of hearing on June 12.
During Wednesday’s hearing, counsel for the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) informed the court that the CBSE had closed its portal for verification and re-evaluation of answer sheets for affected students on Tuesday night and demanded that it be kept open for one month.
Advocate M.A. Niyaz, appearing for the CBSE, said the board had duly addressed the grievances of aggrieved students.
In a statement on X, the CBSE said the application window for verification and re-evaluation was fully functional throughout the notified period of June 2-7, and over 1.6 lakh candidates had successfully submitted requests pertaining to over 3.8 lakh answer books.
“We don’t want education to be politicised like this,” CBSE counsel Niyaz said in court, questioning the maintainability of the petition filed by the student arm of a political party.
The NSUI lawyer said they had raised the issue that had affected many minor students, and that the filing of the petition by a party’s student wing could not be a ground for disqualifying it.
The NSUI has sought an independent inquiry into alleged large-scale irregularities, deficiencies and technical issues in the CBSE’s OSM system. It has also sought manual rechecking and physical verification of the answer sheets of aggrieved students.