Madras High Court rejects plea to award marks to Tamil Nadu board student

CHENNAI: The first bench of the Madras High Court has rejected a plea from a State Board student to strike down a GO issued in July 2021 by the Tamil Nadu government, which declared all the students to have passed without awarding the marks. The bench of Chief Justice M N Bhandari and Justice D Bharatha Chakravarthy refused to quash the GO while dismissing a writ appeal from Nakshatra Bind A K, represented by her mother Dhanya, recently.

Nakshatra, who studied in a Higher Secondary Matriculation school in Kolathur here, wanted to join a school in Kerala. As the school in that state insisted on furnishing the mark sheet of secondary class, she moved the High court here with a writ petition to quash the July 26, 2021 GO. But a single judge rejected it on January 19, this year. Hence, the present writ appeal.

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Dismissing the appeal, the first bench observed that the contention of her counsel that the award of marks, as has been decided by the CBSE, cannot be accepted. The CBSE is a different examination Board and otherwise, their decision cannot mandate the Tamil Nadu government to change its policy decision and more specifically to award the marks without an examination which otherwise would not be appropriate.

It is not only Tamil Nadu but many states have taken a similar decision, to not to insist the students to appear in the examination during the course of covid-19 pandemic and to be declared to have passed the examination without award of marks and consequently thereupon, marksheet was issued to declare them as passed without award of marks, the bench pointed out.

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"The State of Tamil Nadu has taken the decision of similar nature and we do not find any illegality in the policy decision of the state government so as to cause interference in the impugned GO. Marks can be awarded in case of examination where performance of a student is assessed but cannot be in a case where no examination was conducted," the judges said. In view of the above and finding no error in the judgment of the single judge, the writ appeal as also the writ petition are dismissed, the judges added.

Meanwhile, the petitioner has moved the Kerala High Court, which passed an order in her favour with regard to her admission in a local school. The bench also rejected a plea from the counsel for the petitioner to grant permission to appeal in the Supreme Court, as there was no legal issue involved of such nature.