Delhi HC Declines To Reopen CBSE Class 12 Revaluation Portal In OSM Marking Dispute, Hearing Deferred To July

New Delhi, June 12: The Delhi High Court vacation bench on Friday refused to give any direction for the reopening of the revaluation portal of CBSE. The matter has been listed before for the roster bench in July.

Bench hearing and submissions
Division bench of justices Neena Bansal Krishna and Madhu Jain refused to pass any direction after hearing the submissions made by Solicitor General (SG) Tushar Mehta.

SG Tushar Mehta argued that 1.27 lakh aggrieved students have approached through the CBSE portal. There are 3.86 lakh copies of these students being looked into.

It was also submitted that the revaluation was opened twice, and aggrieved students have approached for the revaluation.

"If the direction is passed for reopening of the revaluation portal, it will affect more than 70 lakh students who appeared in the exam, as it will delay their admission process/chances in undergraduate courses," SG Mehta said.

Petitioner’s plea for reopening
The counsel for petitioner NSUI urged the court to direct the reopening of the revaluation portal for three days and submitted that not all the students will be affected if the revaluation portal is open, as only the aggrieved students will file their applications.

The NSUI had approached the High Court through a public interest litigation (PIL) seeking direction for compensatory marks and reopening of the revaluation portal for one month.

On June 8, the Delhi High Court sought a response from the Central Government and CBSE on the plea highlighting a discrepancy in marking in the CBSE examination through the On-Screen Marking (OSM) mode.

The counsel for CBSE had submitted that the petition is not maintainable as the petitioner is a student wing of a political party.

Representation and arguments by NSUI
Advocate Mohd Ali Khan along with Rishav Ranjan appeared for the petitioner and submitted that NSUI is a student organisation of 55 years, and students are minors, which is why it is raising the issue.

The petitioner had said that they would address the objection raised by the CBSE.

During the hearing, the counsel for the CBSE submitted that CBSE is addressing the grievances of students, and affected students can write to the CBSE.

The petitioner NSUI has sought directions to CBSE to give compensatory marks where OSM copies are not readable, not properly marked, etc. It is praying for keeping the revaluation portal open for the next month.

Revaluation and verification requests
The petitioner has prayed for directing the reopening of the portal for verification and permitting manual rechecking and physical verification of the answer sheets of affected students, pending disposal of the writ petition.

It has also sought a direction to initiate appropriate proceedings against the company responsible for the large-scale irregularities in the On-Screen Marking System.

Concerns about examination fairness
The petition has raised concerns about the fairness, transparency and reliability of a national examination process, which has a direct bearing on the future of students. Class XII board marks are not only a record of academic performance.

They determine admission to universities, professional colleges, scholarship opportunities, entrance eligibility and the overall academic future of students. Any error, delay or inconsistency in the evaluation process has immediate consequences which cannot be adequately repaired later. The harm is not abstract. It is concrete, continuing and irreversible in many cases, the plea added.

Issues with the OSM system
The petition raised concerns regarding the implementation of the OSM system by the CBSE. The system was introduced as a digital method of scanning and evaluating answer books.

The petitioner has stated that after the result declaration, large numbers of students, parents and teachers across the country raised concerns regarding blurred scans, missing pages, incomplete uploads, mismatch of answer sheets, unexpectedly low marks and lack of a meaningful mechanism for manual verification. The concern was not confined to a small set of students. It became a nationwide issue because the digital system itself was being questioned by the very persons it was meant to serve.

It is also said that the 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.

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The petitioner submitted 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 the result declaration, the matter cannot be treated as a routine post-result formality.

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