– Mita Mukherjee

Calcutta High Court on Thursday directed the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education to reopen the online enrollment window for the 2025 Madhyamik (Class X state board) exams so that eligible candidates who have not received their admit cards are able to enroll themselves again for appearing in the 2025 exams.

The 2025 Madhyamik exams will start on February 10.

The court today directed the board to reopen the portal at 6 pm today and after students enrolled themselves the board will have to start issuing the admit cards, the court said. The court asked the board to make arrangements so that candidates can collect their admit cards from the board office on Sunday.  

With only a few days left before the state Madhyamik examinations, several cases had come to light where incorrect details about candidates with the same name were mixed up and many genuine students were not sure whether they would be able to write the exam or not.

Several schools have complained that in many cases admit cards were issued to students who are not appearing in the examinations, whereas candidates eligible to write the exams have not received the admit cards.

Headmasters of schools claimed that the mistakes surfaced due to technical problems as this is the first time the board introduced the system of submitting application forms through an online process.

Officials of the board that conducts the Class X exams said the errors happened because of mistakes made during the submission of forms by the schools and negligence on the part of the schools to rectify the errors when they were asked to do so.

Explaining the problems faced by the schools, the headmaster of a school in Nimta in North 24 Parganas said that in his school there are two Class X students with the same name. One of them has cleared the selection test and enrolled for appearing in the 2025 Madhyamik. 

The headmaster said, the other student with the same name has not cleared the selection test and is not eligible for the exam. But, according to the headmaster, the board has issued the admit card ( entry permit for writing the test) to the student who is not eligible to write the exams. Similar complaints were reported from many other schools.

The court today observed it is the responsibility of the schools to ensure that every eligible student is allowed to write the exams. The court asked the errant schools to pay a fine of Rs 10,000.

Board president Ramanuj Ganguly said the problems had arisen due to the negligence of the schools. He said ample opportunities were given to the schools to address the discrepancies.

“On January 7, the board reopened its portal for 24 hours to enable students who missed earlier deadlines. Schools were asked thrice to rectify the errors if they had made any mistake in the submission process. Schools were also asked to inform us if they had any errors for rectification through emails. We have received nearly 2500 emails. The problems of all the candidates who had mistakes and approached us for rectification have been solved by the board. What were these schools doing at that time? Close to 10 lakh candidates will be appearing in the 2025 examinations. Most schools have filled in the online forms successfully and their students had no problem in getting their admit cards. Only a very small number of candidates are facing the problem because of the negligence of their schools. We will definitely make arrangements for fresh enrollment if the court directs us to do so,” Ganguly told EducationWorld.