Delhi HC seeks CBSE's response to NSUI's plea on OSM row; CBSE says "don't politicise education"

The Delhi High Court on Monday sought the response of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and the Central government to a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) alleging widespread irregularities and technical failure in the board's On-Screen Marking (OSM) system affecting class 12 students. .A Division Bench of Justices Neena Bansal Krishna and Madhu Jain issued notice to CBSE despite opposition by the board that the PIL was politically motivated.CBSE's counsel told the Court that the board has been engaging with students and has extended the deadline for verification and re-evaluation portal on several occasions. "It's a PIL, there is no urgency," advocate MA Niyazi, appearing for CBSE told the Bench. Niyazi further said that the PIL was not maintainable."It [petitioner NSUI] is a student wing of a political party (Congress party). We don’t want the education to be politicised like this," Niyazi stated.However, the counsel appearing for NSUI stated that in a similar situation, a plea filed by Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the students' wing of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was entertained. “We are a 55-year-old organisation, and the persons affected by the issue are minors. We are representing their cause,” NSUI’s lawyer Muhammad Ali Khan stated. The High Court issued notice on the PIL to CBSE and Central government and said that the case will be heard next on June 12..Filed through NSUI President Vinod Jhakhar, the petition has sought directions from the Court to award compensatory marks to students whose answer scripts were missing, blurred or incorrectly evaluated. The petitioner said there should be an independent inquiry “into the large-scale irregularities, deficiencies, technical issues and grievance related failures concerning the OSM system” and orders for manual rechecking and physical verification of answer sheets in cases where students dispute the correctness of the scanned copies or the evaluation process.Further, directions have been sought to keep the verification and re-evaluation portal open for an additional month to allow affected students to seek remedies. .As per the plea, class 12 marks play a critical role in determining admissions to universities, scholarships and professional courses, making any evaluation errors potentially detrimental to students’ academic futures.According to the petition, students, parents and teachers across the country reported issues including blurred scanned answer sheets, missing pages, incomplete uploads, answer-sheet mismatches and unexpectedly low marks after the declaration of results. As per the petitioner, these complaints indicate systemic flaws in the OSM system rather than isolated incidents.CBSE’s public communications had acknowledged technical glitches on the portal used for accessing scanned answer books, it was contended. Approximately 1,27,146 applications relating to 3,87,399 scanned answer sheets were submitted within a short period after the results were announced..The petition was filed through advocates Rishav Ranjan and Ajay Chhikara.