Delhi High Court rejects NSUI plea over CBSE OSM row

The Delhi High Court on Monday refused to entertain a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) petition against alleged irregularities and technical failure in the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE)'s On-Screen Marking (OSM) system for the class XII exams..A Division Bench of Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia disposed of the PIL filed by National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) without any orders after noting that a similar petition was recently rejected by the Supreme Court.The Court also observed that such grievances cannot be decided in a PIL. It added that the students can individually approach the Court or CBSE as per the prescribed framework."We observe that claim for revaluation of answer book gives rise to individual cause of action to the student concerned for which it is always open for the student to take rederssal of the grievances with CBSE within framework," the Bench said..The petition filed by NSUI President Vinod Jhakhar sought directions for the award of compensatory marks to students whose answer scripts were missing, blurred or incorrectly evaluated. The petitioner also sought an independent inquiry “into the large-scale irregularities, deficiencies, technical issues and grievance-related failures concerning the OSM system”Further, directions were also sought to keep the verification and re-evaluation portal open for an additional month..Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for CBSE, submitted that the top court had declined to intervene on a petition seeking reopening of the onscreen verification portal of answer-sheets.Mehta added that after re-evaluation, classes have started and in some cases, counselling is at an advanced stage.He also questioned the locus of NSUI."This is filed by a political organisation," he said. "Which represents students," said advocate Apar Gupta appearing for NSUI. "We are also for the students. No political organisation needs to meddle into this," the SG said.Gupta submitted that there are several students who were seeking revaluation of their answer sheets.However, the Court said that it cannot intervene now as the Supreme Court has already closed the matter."The Supreme Court has already made an observation that relief cannot be granted at this belated stage. After Supreme Court notices that at this stage such belated prayer cannot be granted, can we say no it can still be granted? For us, is there something called judicial discipline or not?" the Court said..[Read Live Coverage]