The Delhi High Court on Wednesday pulled up an NGO for approaching it at the 11th hour seeking a direction to the CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education)-affiliated schools to publish on their websites the rationale document of the assessment criteria for Class 10 students before finalising the results for greater transparency.
“You think you will come at the 11th hour and get everything stayed. It is a publicity stunt. It is in a very very bad taste. It is very very unfair what you are doing to us,” a vacation bench of Justices Manmohan and Navin Chawla remarked.
The bench said the NGO should not behave like a commercial litigant.
Withdrawal of application
Following the court remarks, counsel for NGO Justice for All said he wished to withdraw the application. The court allowed him to do so and granted liberty to file a plea seeking an early hearing of the main petition, listed for hearing in August, before the roster bench.
The fresh application was filed in a pending case in which the NGO has sought to modify the CBSE’s policy for tabulation of marks of Class 10 exams based on schools’ internal assessment.
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Advocate Khagesh B Jha, representing the NGO, said he had not filed the application for the interim relief with the main petition since the cause had arisen now as fresh FAQs have been published by the CBSE on June 9. The last date to upload the marks and internal assessment by schools on the CBSE website was June 30, he stated.
The fresh application sought an interim order to direct all the schools affiliated by the board to publish the rationale document for devised criteria for the assessment of students on their respective websites, before calculating the result and uploading the same on the CBSE portal, to bring transparency.
It said students should be able access the document and raise grievances with the CBSE well in time along with the sagacious grievance redressal mechanism by the board for the students.
On June 2, the court sought the response of the Centre, the Delhi government and the CBSE on the NGO’s petition claiming that the policy of the board for calculating marks of Class 10 students based on the internal assessment by schools was unconstitutional and required to be modified.
