New Delhi, Jun 8 The Delhi High Court on Monday sought the stand of the Centre and the CBSE on a petition by the Congress' student wing seeking an independent inquiry into the alleged irregularities in the on-screen marking (OSM) system for Class 12 exam.
Issuing notice on a PIL by the National Students' Union of India (NSUI), a vacation bench of Justices Neena Bansal Krishna and Madhu Jain asked the central government and the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to file their responses and listed the matter for hearing on June 12.
The petitioner submitted that the CBSE closed the portal for verifying and revaluing answer sheets last night and requested a direction to keep it open for affected students for one month.
Counsel for CBSE, advocate M A Niyaz, submitted that the authorities extended the deadline for closing the portal from time to time, and the education board was duly addressing the grievances of aggrieved students.
He also objected to the maintainability of the PIL, emphasising that the NSUI was a student wing of a political party.
"We don't want education to be politicised like this," the counsel submitted.
NSUI counsel said that it filed the PIL on behalf of minors and that association with a political party was not a disqualification.
The PIL, filed through advocate Rishav Ranjan, also seeks manual rechecking and physical verification of answer sheets of aggrieved students.
In the petition, the NSUI has said the sharp decline in overall performance in this year's Class 12 results has led to widespread concern among students and parents regarding the fairness, consistency and reliability of the OSM system, especially in the light of several requests for scanned answer books and complaints on discrepancies and technical issues acknowledged by the CBSE.
It has asserted that concerns around OSM were not confined to a "small set of students" and those whose answer sheets were affected by scanning defects, mismatch errors or other technical failures cannot be made to suffer because of deficiencies in the system.
"The Respondent No. 2 (CBSE) itself acknowledged, through its own public communications, that the portal for obtaining scanned copies of answer books suffered technical glitches and that a very large number of applications, approximately 1,27,146 applications concerning 3,87,399 scanned answer books, had been submitted in a very short time," the plea has submitted.
"The petitioner submits that this figure reflects an extraordinary level of concern and lack of confidence amongst students regarding the process. When such a large number of students seek scanned copies immediately after result declaration, the matter cannot be treated as a routine post-result formality," it added.
The plea has further claimed that the existing grievance mechanism is inadequate as it left students with "limited digital remedies" and "no meaningful process for manual verification or independent rechecking of disputed answer books".
The PIL has also sought a direction to the authorities to formulate and implement proper safeguards, protocols and guidelines for future digital evaluation systems.
A prayer is made to award compensatory higher marks to students whose answer scripts are missing or blurred.
