Telangana High Court on Monday passed an interim direction postponing all SSC examinations, which were earlier deferred following incidence of COVID-19, till normalcy returns in the State.
A bench of Justice M.S. Ramachandra Rao and Justice K. Lakshman instructed the government to notify rescheduled dates of the postponed examinations later. The bench passed the order on the hearing of a PIL petition seeking deferment of SSC exams in the backdrop of rising cases of coronavirus.
The PIL filed by a private educational institute faculty member M. Bala Krishna came up for hearing first on March 20. A bench of Chief Justice Raghvendra Singh Chauhan and Justice A. Abhishek Reddy heard the arguments of the petitioner’s counsel Kowturu Pavan Kumar and Advocate General B.S. Prasad.
The SSC exams started on March 19, a day before the bench heard the petition. The second exam was held the next day (March 20) when the PIL was heard. Notwithstanding the AG’s contention that the administration took all precautions to conduct the exams, the bench instructed the government to defer the SSC exams scheduled to be held from March 23 to 30.
A call on the remaining exams scheduled to be held from March 31 to April 6 was supposed to be taken later. However, the Centre has announced complete lockdown till April 14. Meanwhile, the State government on Sunday held a high-level meeting and postponed the exams to be held from March 31 to April 6.
With this, all SSC exams scheduled to be held from March 23 remain postponed. The AG presented a copy of the government’s decision to postpone the SSC exams before the bench.
