Reshma Ravishanker

A day after the Central Board of Secondary Examinations (CBSE) issued a new draft policy on class X board exams 2026 that led to confusion over non-inclusion of some languages, the board issued a clarification in this regard.

On Tuesday, the CBSE published a draft policy on the website announcing that two class X exams will be conducted for students to give them room to improve their scores. Included in the draft were categories under which languages were segregated into subject groups for 2026 exams.

While the draft mentioned Hindi as the Second Language and about 27 other languages in the ‘Regional and Foreign languages group’, many languages including Kannada and Malayalam were omitted.

This drew ire among stakeholders and confusion among teachers who sought clarification. “We have always seen that the CBSE has attested importance to learning regional languages and adhering to state policies when it comes to the second language. It does not mandate Hindi. This is just draft regulation and needs clarity,” Dr J Bhuvaneshwari, principal, Presidency School remarked.

Meanwhile, another principal from a private school in Bengaluru said, “The non-inclusion of Kannada must be clarified as the state necessitates students to learn it as the second language irrespective of the board.”

The CBSE on Thursday afternoon issued a clarification stating that all the other languages were included.

“This is with regard to the draft Policy for the conduct of two Board Examinations of Class X released by the CBSE on its website cn 25.02.2025. It is clarified that the list of other subjects and languages contained in the draft date sheet is only indicative and that all the subjects and languages as offered presently shall continue to be offered for 2025-2026 as well. Thus, in addition to the languages mentioned under the list of languages in point 8 of the draft policy under the heading “Regional and Foreign languages group”, Punjabi(004), Russian (021), Nepali (024), Limboo(025), Lepcha (026), Sindhi (008), Malayalam (012), Odia(013), Assamese (014), Kannada(015), Kokborok (091), Telugu (007), Arabic(016) and Persian (023) shall continue to be offered,” the board said.