The Supreme Court of India has rejected the plea filed by the parents who were asking the state board authorities to refund the examination fees of the students, as the Class 10 and 12 board exams stood cancelled this year in most of the states.
A bench of Justice AM Khanwilkar and Justice Dinesh Maheshwari said that they did not see any merit in the argument put up by the parents. The Supreme Court bench further supported the arguments put up by the state boards.
The court said that the arguments of the secondary and higher examination state board are stronger as they had already made the preparations to conduct the board exams, but the second wave of Covid-19 caused a lot of disruptions, due to which they had to be cancelled.
Thus, it justifies all the expenditures made by the boards before the second wave hit. The court then said that the return of the examination fees is not in the control or the best interest of the state boards, as they function on examination fees themselves.
CBSE, state board exams cancelled
After constant requests from the students and the second wave of the pandemic, the Central Board of Secondary Education decided to cancel the Class 10 and 12 board exams in the country, following which, most of the state boards also cancelled their board exams.
Since the exams were cancelled, each state decided on its own evaluation criteria for calculating the results of the students, which mostly relied on the performance in previous years and the marks of the students in pre-board and unit tests.
Recently, the Bombay High Court ordered the Maharashtra Education Board to consider refunding the examination fees to the students. The state board then approached the Supreme Court, which deemed its arguments strong and logical.
Source Link
