SC to hear next week plea filed by CBSE class 12 students from Gulf countries

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday said it would hear next week a plea challenging the CBSE's March 27 assessment scheme for regular students who were affected by the cancellation of class 12 board examination in Gulf countries due to the Iran-US war. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the CBSE, told a bench of justices M M Sundresh and P B Varale that they would file a response on the plea.

The bench said the matter would be heard next week. On July 8, the apex court agreed to hear the plea filed by 30 regular students from Gulf countries and sought responses from the Centre and the Central Board of Secondary Education ( CBSE ).

While issuing notice on the petitions, the top court had said a copy of the pleas be served to the Solicitor General. The apex court had also sought responses from the Centre and the CBSE on a separate plea filed by a class 12 student from a Gulf country challenging the June 21 notification on the assessment of private candidates affected by the cancellation of examinations.

The counsel appearing for the petitioners had told the bench that students were not satisfied with the assessment scheme. The plea filed by 30 students sought quashing of and/or suitably modifying the March 27, 2026 assessment scheme. It also sought a direction to the authorities to adopt a fair, transparent and non-discriminatory evaluation mechanism.

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SC directs CBSE to conduct special fresh, improvement exams

Besides several other directions, it urged that the CBSE be directed to conduct a special fresh examination and special improvement examination for affected students in all subjects, without any restriction on the number of subjects that may be opted for, and to permit such students to retain whichever result is more beneficial to them.

On June 22, the Centre had informed the apex court that the CBSE has come up with a new policy for the evaluation of private students who were affected by the cancellation of class 12 board examination in Gulf countries due to the war.

The Solicitor General, appearing for the Centre and the CBSE, had said that a fresh all-India policy was framed to address the concerns of similarly situated students affected by the cancellation of examinations in the Gulf countries due to the regional conflict.

The top law officer had said that under the new policy, which was notified on June 21, a distinct formula for evaluating private students appearing for the board exam was developed.

Giving details, Mehta had said that for the subjects for which examination could not be held, the performance would be assessed based on the marks obtained by the private candidate in class 10 and the last-attempted class 12 board examination.

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Cancellation of CBSE board exams in Gulf countries

He had said under the new policy, the subjects for which the examination was cancelled, the marks would be computed as 40 per cent of theory marks scored in the class 10 board examination and 60 per cent of theory marks scored in the last attempted class 12 board examination.

Mehta had explained that there were two categories of students who were largely affected due to the cancellation of the examinations across seven Gulf countries, and they were regular school students and private candidates.

He had said that the unique challenge posed by private candidates was that they had no school to supply internal assessment records such as quarterly, half-yearly and pre-board examination marks, which were the very basis on which the original March 27 evaluation scheme was designed to evaluate results.

The top court was then hearing a separate plea filed by a private candidate from Al Jubail in Saudi Arabia challenging the CBSE's failure to declare his class 12 improvement examination results according to the original evaluation scheme.

The class 12 board examinations were cancelled by the CBSE in seven West Asian countries (Bahrain, Iran, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE) due to the conflict in West Asia.