Supreme Court dismisses pleas challenging CBSE’s decision to conduct retest

The Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a batch of petitions against Central Board of Secondary Educations’s (CBSE) move to reconduct Class 12 Economics and Class 10 Maths examination in the wake of a paper leak.

The top court said it is the discretion of the CBSE to conduct the re-examination and can’t be challenged in the court.

A bench of justices SA Bobde and L Nageswara Rao asked the students who had challenged the CBSE’s decision to appear in the examination if conducted.

Several petitions were filed before the top court after education secretary Anil Swarup said on March 28 that the re-examination of the CBSE’s Class 12 economics paper and Class 10 maths paper will be held,

However, the CBSE on Tuesday said that the board has decided not to conduct a retest for the Class 10 mathematics exam after a random evaluation of answer sheets showed that the performance of students had not improved even though there was evidence of the question paper leaking on social media.

Besides seeking an independent probe into the leak, one of the petitioners, 15-year-old Rohan Mathew, also sought a direction to the CBSE to declare the results on the basis of the examinations already conducted.

Read | Friendship and a few thousand rupees: How the CBSE Class 12 Economics paper was leaked

Mathew and two others have moved the top court seeking quashing of the CBSE’s decision to re-conduct the Class 10 mathematics examination on several grounds, including violation of their fundamental rights.

Earlier, another plea was filed in the apex court by Reepak Kansal, a resident of Shakarpur here, challenging the decision of the CBSE to cancel and re-conduct the two papers.

(With inputs from PTI)