The Delhi High Court on Monday sought a response from the Central Board of Secondary Education on a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by the National Students’ Union of India alleging widespread irregularities and technical failures in the board’s On-Screen Marking (OSM) system used for evaluating Class 12 answer sheets.
A Division Bench comprising Justices Neena Bansal Krishna and Madhu Jain issued notice to CBSE and listed the matter for further hearing on June 12.
During the proceedings, CBSE opposed the petition, arguing that it was politically motivated and not maintainable.
Appearing for the board, advocate M A Niyazi told the court that CBSE had been actively engaging with students and had extended the deadlines for verification and re-evaluation multiple times.
“It is a PIL, there is no urgency,” Niyazi submitted, adding that the petitioner was the student wing of a political party and education should not be politicised.
Counsel for NSUI countered the argument by pointing out that courts had previously entertained a similar petition filed by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing affiliated with the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The petition, filed through NSUI president Vinod Jhakhar, seeks directions to award compensatory marks to students whose answer sheets were allegedly missing, blurred, mismatched, or incorrectly evaluated.
It also seeks an independent inquiry into alleged large-scale irregularities, technical deficiencies, and grievance redressal failures in the OSM system. Additionally, the plea requests manual rechecking and physical verification of answer sheets in cases where students dispute the accuracy of scanned copies or the evaluation process.
NSUI has further urged the court to direct CBSE to keep its verification and re-evaluation portal open for another month to enable affected students to pursue remedies.
The petition argues that Class 12 results play a crucial role in university admissions, scholarships, and professional course admissions, making evaluation errors potentially damaging to students’ academic prospects.
According to the plea, students, parents, and teachers from across the country reported issues such as blurred scanned answer sheets, missing pages, incomplete uploads, answer-sheet mismatches, and unexpectedly low scores following the declaration of results.
The petitioner contends that these complaints point to systemic flaws in the OSM system rather than isolated instances.
