Odisha High Court begins contempt proceedings against CBSE official, seeks reply by 3 July

Cuttack: The Odisha High Court began ‘contempt of court’ proceedings against Central Board of Secondary Education joint secretary Manoj Srivastava for allegedly making scurrilous remarks over the court’s order. Issuing notice to CBSE JS (Academics) Srivastava, Justice Biswanath Rath asked the officer to reply by 3 July as to why contempt proceedings should not be continued against him for  “making scurrilous remarks over the court’s order.” [caption id=“attachment_3726337” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. PTI[/caption] Srivastava allegedly had issued a press statement in New Delhi questioning the propriety of an order issued by Justice Rath directing the CBSE to re-evaluate the answer sheets of some aggrieved class XII students. Srivastava had even stated that the court order was made for a “wrong submission” by the CBSE counsel in the vacation bench of the court. On going to the press and insulting the court verdict, Justice Rath observed: “Some officers are becoming too arrogant while dealing with court orders.” At least 22 students had approached the high court alleging discrepancies in the marks awarded to them in certain papers. Engaging experts, the board re-evaluated the papers to find out that marks awarded initially changed in at least 18 of the 51 papers re-evaluated. The high court subsequently ordered re-evaluation of answer sheets of another 159 aggrieved students, whose results were also published in May. Expressing displeasure over the happenings in the CBSE and observing that the board was playing with the future of the students, the high court said: “There is an apparent mistake in the evaluation process of the CBSE and the students have a genuine grievance.”