Chennai: The Supreme Court today set deadline till 3 June for the Centre to take a decision on class 12 board exams.
Hearing a plea filed by advocate Mamta Sharma, the apex court told the government, ‘You take the decision. You are entitled to it. If you are departing from the policy of last year, then you must give tangible reasons for it.’
It then adjourned the plea till 3 June. The government will take a final decision within the next two days on whether to conduct class 12 board exams amid the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, Attorney General K K Venugopal told this to the bench of Justices AM Khanwilkar and Dinesh Maheshwari which was hearing a plea seeking directions to cancel the class 12 exams of the CBSE and Council for the Indian School Certificate Examination (CISCE) in view of the current situation.
The petitioner urged that the exam be scrapped altogether for this academic year and marks be computed using the methodology employed last year.
In the plea, the advocate has requested the highest Court to direct the national exam conducting authorities to declare the Class 12 result on the basis of objective methodology within the specific time frame.
Apart from this, around 7000 parents have also moved to the highest court seeking cancellation of the Class 12 Board exams amid this pandemic.
“Conducting Class 12 board examinations online or offline not feasible because of an unprecedented pandemic. Delay in the declaration of Class 12 results will hamper students taking admission to foreign universities. CBSE and CISCE must devise an objective methodology to declare the results within the specified time else it will affect nearly 12 lakh students,” the petition said.
It contended that notifications issued by CBSE and ICSE deferring the exams to an unspecified date should be quashed, adding that students cannot be subjected to suffer uncertainty amid unprecedented public health crisis.