Decision on scrapping remaining Class XII exams likely on Wednesday, CBSE tells SC

NEW DELHI: The Centre and the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) told the Supreme Court on Tuesday that a decision on scrapping of the class XII board examinations scheduled for July would be taken by Wednesday, prompting the bench to adjourn the hearing on the issue till Thursday.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the court that a decision on scrapping the exams was at an advanced stage and would be taken shortly. The ICSE Board assured the court that it would abide by any CBSE decision on the exams. A three-judge bench led by Justice AM Khanwilkar was dealing with a petition filed by a group of parents, through advocate Rishi Malhotra, seeking to have the exams cancelled in view of the pandemic.

The parents were instead seeking marks for students on the basis of internal assessments. Alternatively, they said, students could be allotted average marks they had got in the other papers so far.


The CBSE had issued a notification on May 18, saying it would hold the remaining exams of CBSE Board (class XII) between July 1-15.

The petition flagged the issue of safety of millions of students who would be exposed to COVID-19 if they were to appear in the exams.

The petition dubbed the CBSE’s decision discriminatory and arbitrary, and said that as per AIIMS data, the pandemic would be at its peak.

On May 25, the Ministry of Human Resource Development had announced exams for class X and XII students in almost 15,000 exam centres, as against 3,000 centres earlier.