Supreme Court allows CBSE to cancel board exams, okays new marking scheme

The Supreme Court on Friday permitted the Centre and the CBSE to cancel the remaining board examinations due to COVID-19 pandemic and gave a go-ahead to its scheme to award marks to students for the cancelled papers scheduled to be held in July.

A bench of Justices A M Khanwilkar, Dinesh Maheshwari and Sanjiv Khanna permitted the CBSE to issue a notification for the cancellation of the examinations.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre and the CBSE, said that the assessment scheme will consider marks achieved by students in last three papers of board exams.

Both CBSE and ICSE told the top court that the results of the class X and XII board exams can be declared by mid of July.

The top court was hearing pleas seeking relief, including scrapping of remaining exams of Class 12 scheduled from July 1-15, in view of increasing number of COVID-19 cases. Similar relief was sought by the ICSE Board also.

CBSE board exam results to be out by July 15

Meanwhile, CBSE also announced that the results for class 10 and 12 exams will be declared by July 15.

According to Exam Controller Sanyam Bhardwaj, the exams which were pending due to the COVID-19 situation have been cancelled.

"Results will now be declared following an alternate assessment scheme. Class 12 students will get an option to appear for exams later to improve their score. However, for students who chose for sit for exams, their marks in the exams will be treated as the final score," Bhardwaj said in an official notification.

"Class 10 students will not get the chance to appear for improvement exam. Their result declared by the board shall be treated final," he added.