Supreme Court Gives Two Weeks’ Time to Decide ‘Objective Criteria’ for CBSE, ICSE Board Results as PM Interacts with ‘Thankful’ Students, Parents

Manas Dasgupta

NEW DELHI, June 3: Some students of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and their parents were pleasantly surprised and elated to find the Prime Minister Narendra Modi interacting with them at a virtual meeting organized by the union education ministry on Thursday.

Modi conducted the surprise interactive session two days after he chaired a meeting of the board and various stakeholders in which the path-finding decision to cancel the CBSE class 12 board examination for the current year was taken to the benefit of the students in view of the prevailing Covid situation. The ICSE board as well as several state boards also followed suit cancelling their respective board examinations.

The Prime Minister also interacted with the parents of the students during the meeting and had a chat with them on various issues and concerns.

The Class 12 exams were cancelled after a high-level meeting chaired by PM Modi on Tuesday to ward off the threat of Covid-19 infections. Long deliberations were held at the meeting with all the stakeholders.

Modi’s interactions with the students and parents followed the Supreme Court giving the CBSE and ICSE boards two weeks’ time to place on record the objective criteria by which they intended to assess the performance of the students in lieu of the examinations.

“We are happy you have decided in-principle to cancel the exam… but what are the objective standards [for assessment]… That is not spelt out here in this letter,” Justice A.M. Khanwilkar, the lead judge on the Bench, asked Attorney General K.K. Venugopal, appearing for the Centre.

Venugopal said the process for fixing the criteria may take a “little time” and asked the court to anyway dispose of the petition filed by an advocate, Mamta Sharma. The prayer made in the petition had been fulfilled with the cancellation of the exams.

Justice Khanwilkar, however, said the petitioners would want to address the court once the government placed on record the assessment standards. “Both sides may have issues concerning the objective criteria…” he said.

“Any issue, let them file an application,” Venugopal replied.

Justice Khanwilkar said the court would prefer to keep the petition pending till the objective criteria were also scrutinised. Initially, the government suggested filing the standards in four weeks, but the court insisted on two weeks.

“The students have apprehensions… Many students want to go outside for further education. This requires an urgent decision. Let the persons concerned interact on a day-to-day basis,” Justice Khanwilkar said.

Justice Dinesh Maheshwari, the other judge on the Bench, also asked why the government needed even two weeks, as objective criteria for assessment had also been notified last year when the Board exams were similarly cancelled due to the pandemic.

The ICSE, represented by advocate J.K. Das, urged the court to give more time, at least three weeks, to prepare the criteria for assessment.

“If you want to do it [finalise the objective criteria], you can do it overnight… Everything can now be done on video conferencing… Don’t bargain for time like this… Do not force us to pass directions. Do it on your own,” Justice Khanwilkar addressed Das.

CBSE secretary Anurag Tripathi said they would try to give the result in the shortest possible time. Tripathi added that the evaluation process is likely to begin within 15 days.

Ms. Sharma also raised the case of exams of Class XII students under the State Boards. She said the decision on the exams should be “uniform” across all Boards. But it was not entertained by the court. “Let the CBSE/ICSE problem get over… You had only asked for CBSE/ICSE Class XII exams… Now do not ask for the heavens,” Justice Khanwilkar said.

The petitioner earlier argued against the deferment of the CBSE and ICSE exams to an unspecified date. She had said students could not be made to suffer uncertainty in the midst of an unprecedented public health crisis posed by the COVID pandemic.

The court adjourned the case by two weeks.

Many students had appealed to the CBSE and the Centre to cancel the examination. The students feared that the exam could infect them because those under 18 aren’t currently eligible for vaccination.

The students have been posting message of thanks on various social media platforms after the government’s decision.

The prime minister keeps holding such interactive sessions with the students. In April, interacting with students virtually in his annual ‘Parikasha Pe Charcha’ programme, the Prime Minister told the students not to fear exams but to see them as a test to improve themselves. He also said students sometime become over conscious regarding exams and asked them to consider it as a small destination in their long lives.

“The board will now gauge students’ progress over the past year based on well-defined objective criteria,” the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) had said following the announcement of the cancellation of the examinations. “Health and safety of our students is of utmost importance and there would be no compromise on this aspect,” a PMO statement had said.
Yesterday, PM Modi elaborated on his decision on Twitter, in the process quoting a few thankful parents and teachers. “This was the only option and is the best, considering the risk to life and tremendous mental pressure the kids were facing,” he wrote in one of his tweets, for instance.

“We got several inputs from all over the nation, which were insightful and enabled us to take a student-friendly decision,” he said in another.

Earlier, during a May 23 meeting, CBSE had proposed holding the exam between July 15 and August 26. A majority of the states had expressed their opinion in favour of holding the exam, Union Human Resource Development Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal had said following that meeting.