The Delhi High Court has rejected a student’s plea seeking a correction in her internal assessment marks for Class 10 on the CBSE portal, saying there would be “utter chaos” if schools were allowed to first commit errors while uploading the marks and the board was later asked to bring changes.
Justice C Hari Shankar said although the court empathised with the student, it is “powerless” in the face of circulars clearly and categorically not allowing any such change in the internal assessment marks as once uploaded, they have to be treated as final for preparing the results.
“Once a school uploads the internal assessment marks of a student on the website of the CBSE, it cannot seek any correction in that regard, even if there was an error while uploading the marks,” the court said in a recent order.
“This is one of those unfortunate cases in which the court regrets that it has to rule from the head and not from the heart,” it added.
The petitioner, a student in a CBSE-affiliated school in Oman, moved the court after it came to her notice that in spite of securing a perfect 20 out of 20 in a paper in the internal assessment, her final Class-10 results, as announced by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), showed that she was awarded only 18 marks.
The petitioner contended that there was no dispute about the fact that she was awarded 20 marks and she should not be made to suffer on account of the school’s mistake.
The court said the restriction on subsequent corrections is in public interest and the schools are advised to be careful while uploading the marks.
“The proscription, in my considered opinion, is eminently in public interest. Schools in India, as well as abroad, are affiliated to the CBSE. Utter chaos would result if schools were permitted to commit errors while uploading students’ marks on the website of the CBSE and thereafter, call upon the CBSE to correct the marks awarded at their end,” the judge said.
“The CBSE would also not be in a position to blindly accept such requests, and would, if this practice were to be allowed, have to conduct independent verifications in each such case to ascertain the actual marks which the candidate had been awarded…. It would be debatable as to whether the CBSE would ever, in that case, be in a position to announce the final results of all students,” he added.
The court observed that circulars issued by the CBSE were not under challenge in the matter and therefore, there was no “sustainable grievance” in the petition.
