Supreme Court dismisses five petitions challenging CBSE decision to conduct retest of Class XII economics paper

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed five petitions challenging Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE) decision to conduct a re-examination of the Class XII economics paper after an alleged leak. The top court said it is the discretion of the Central Board of Secondary Education to conduct the re-examination and can’t be challenged in the court. A bench of Justices SA Bobde and L Nageswara Rao asked the students who had challenged the CBSE’s decision to appear in the re-examination on 25 April.

Several petitions were filed before the apex court after the CBSE said on 28 March that the Class X maths and Class XI economics paper had allegedly leaked. Besides seeking an independent probe into the leak, one of the petitioners, 15-year-old Rohan Mathew, also sought a direction to the CBSE to declare the results on the basis of the examinations already conducted.

Mathew and two others have moved the top court seeking quashing of the CBSE’s decision to re-conduct the Class 10 mathematics examination on several grounds, including violation of their fundamental rights. Earlier, another plea was filed in the apex court by Reepak Kansal, a resident of Shakarpur, challenging the decision of the CBSE to cancel and re-conduct the two papers.

CBSE, on 30 March, announced that it would re-conduct the examination for economics for Class X throughout the country on 25 April. However, CBSE said on Tuesday that it has found after assessment that there was no impact of the alleged paper leak of Class X maths paper and hence, no re-examination would be held.

“It is to be noted that this year, 16,38,428 students are appearing for the Class X and 11,86,306 students for Class XII in CBSE examinations. And therefore, to penalise the student community for an incident which is under investigation and without completion of that investigation/enquiry and issuing a notice on 28 March, 2018, (for re-exams), affects the fundamental rights of students which is arbitrary, illegal and unconstitutional,” the plea said.