The Supreme Court on Monday asked the Central Board of Secondary Education to respond to a petition seeking contempt action against it for issuing a notification requiring students of Classes 10 and 12 to cough up “exorbitant” amounts like ₹1,000 and ₹1,200, respectively, to obtain their evaluated answer sheets.
A Bench led by Justice Ranjan Gogoi gave six weeks for the Board to reply on the allegation that the CBSE notification of May 31, 2018 was in “wilful and deliberate” disobedience of the Supreme Court decisions in 2011 and 2016.
The petition, filed by advocate Kumar Shanu and Paras Jain, pointed out that the May 31 notification was in spite of the apex court warning the CBSE Chairman to “scrupulously” observe the directions of the court and charge students the nominal fee prescribed under the Right to Information law to access their answer sheets.
“This practice of alleged contemnor [CBSE] of issuing notice every year prescribing exorbitant fee in contrary to the law laid by this court is a clear attempt to surpass and to overrule the supreme authority of this court,” the petition contended.