The Supreme Court on Wednesday expressed concern over the Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE) controversial On-Screen Marking (OSM) system for evaluation of Class 12 board examination answer sheets.
Hearing a PIL seeking supervision and regulation of the CBSE’s new evaluation system, a Bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana observed that students had been facing persistent problems under the newly introduced digital evaluation mechanism.
The CJI-led Bench asked Solicitor General Tushar Mehta assist the court in resolving the issue and present a status report detailing actions taken by the government and the board to resolve the difficulties being faced by the students.
The apex court said the Union government should not treat the proceedings as adversarial and stressed that it was looking for a permanent solution to the concerns raised over the evaluation process.
Appearing for the Centre, SG Mehta submitted that while most of the individual marksheet-related grievances referred to in the petition had been resolved, the government was taking the broader concerns regarding the evaluation system seriously.
He informed the bench that a one-member commission headed by S. Radha Chauhan had been constituted to review the OSM mechanism and recommend reforms. “We are not taking this adversely,” SG Mehta told the top court, adding that the panel was already examining the grievances raised by students and other stakeholders.
The matter has been posted for further hearing next week on July 24.
According to the petition filed by Rakesh Binjola, the OSM system, introduced by CBSE for the first time through circulars issued in February this year, suffered from large-scale irregularities in the evaluation of answer sheets.
The plea alleged that due to scanning errors and portal glitches, the digital evaluation process resulted in arbitrary assessment and, in some cases, non-evaluation of answers, violating students’ rights under Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution.
It further claimed that teachers were not provided adequate formal training before implementation of the OSM system and that scanned answer sheets suffered from defects such as missing pages, illegible scans and incomplete evaluation.
The petitioner also alleged that the irregularities had adversely affected a large number of students in India and abroad and pointed to a decline in the overall Class 12 pass percentage to 85.2 per cent this year, seeking re-evaluation, rechecking and an independent inquiry into the evaluation process.
(With inputs from agencies)