Delhi High Court Orders CBSE to Re-Look Into Evaluation of Answer Sheets

According to reports, students who had sent in their answer sheets for re-evaluation for their Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) XII^th Board examination marks received an increase of 35-45 marks in their total score. This has prompted the Delhi High Court to suggest that there could be a probability of mistakes being made in original evaluation of the answer papers too.

A Bench of justices AK Chawla and Sanjeev Sachdeva questioned the CBSE Board as to the errors which would be found in evaluation of papers, if there were multiple errors in just the totalling of the marks.

Based upon this suspicion, the Bench has directed the CBSE Board to place before it the decision taken by the CBSE Board to do away with the re-evaluation policy. This decision was taken by the CBSE governing body and its examination committee. The Bench has also asked that the format of marking papers for all the Class XII subjects for which the students had requested verification be brought before them.

Accordingly, the Bench has given a date of June 21 to the students to place their pleas before the court.

The standard XII students who have recently given their CBSE Board exams from Delhi, and one from Saudi Arabia have given in a petition challenging the decision taken by the CBSE Board to do away with the verification process.

The students have also requested that they be treated at par with students from Odisha, whose answer sheets have been sent for re-evaluation by the Orissa High Court. The CBSE has countered this request with a reasoning that no re-evaluation of the Odisha results has been carried out yet as they have sought a review of the Orrisa High Court order.

CBSE has also alleged that the news report regarding the errors in totalling of marks has been highly sensationalized. It has stated that under the policy of providing photocopies of the answer sheets to the students, if discrepancies are found, they may bring them to the attention of the Board for appropriate action.