The Delhi High Court on Monday sought responses from the Centre and the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on a petition filed by the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) seeking an independent inquiry into alleged irregularities in the on-screen marking (OSM) system used for Class 12 examinations.

A vacation bench of Justices Neena Bansal Krishna and Madhu Jain issued notice to the Centre and CBSE, directing them to file their replies. The matter has been listed for hearing on June 12.

The petitioner informed the court that the CBSE had closed the portal for verification and revaluation of answer sheets and sought directions to keep it open for affected students for one month.

Appearing for CBSE, advocate M A Niyaz said the board had extended the portal deadline on several occasions and was addressing students’ grievances. He also questioned the maintainability of the public interest litigation, arguing that NSUI is the student wing of a political party.

Counsel for NSUI submitted that the petition was filed on behalf of minor students and that political affiliation did not disqualify it from seeking relief.

Filed through advocate Rishav Ranjan, the petition seeks manual rechecking and physical verification of answer sheets for aggrieved students.

The plea states that concerns over the OSM system emerged following a decline in Class 12 results and complaints relating to discrepancies, scanning defects and technical issues. It argues that students affected by technical failures should not suffer due to deficiencies in the evaluation process.

According to the petition, CBSE acknowledged technical glitches in the portal used for obtaining scanned copies of answer books. It noted that around 1,27,146 applications relating to 3,87,399 scanned answer books were submitted shortly after the results were declared.

The petition contends that the volume of requests reflects widespread concern among students about the evaluation process and cannot be treated as a routine post-result exercise.

It further argues that the existing grievance redressal mechanism is inadequate, leaving students with limited digital remedies and no effective process for manual verification or independent rechecking of disputed answer books.

The petition also seeks directions for the formulation of safeguards, protocols and guidelines for future digital evaluation systems and requests compensatory marks for students whose answer scripts are found to be missing or blurred.

Inputs from PTI

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