Supreme Court to hear plea against CBSE evaluation policy for Gulf Class 12 students on July 14

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to hear a plea challenging the CBSE's March 27 assessment scheme for regular students who were affected by the cancellation of Class XII board examination in Gulf countries due to the Iran-US war. A bench of Justices K V Viswanathan and Alok Aradhe sought responses from the Centre and the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on the plea filed by 30 regular students from Gulf countries. The bench also sought responses from the Centre and the CBSE on a separate plea filed by a Class XII student from a Gulf country challenging the June 21 notification on the assessment of private candidates affected by the cancellation of examinations.

Advocate Raj Kishor Choudhary, who appeared for the petitioners, told the bench that students were not satisfied with the assessment scheme. While issuing notice on the petitions, the bench said that a copy of the pleas should also be served on the office of Solicitor General Tushar Mehta. It posted the matter for hearing on July 14. Advocate Vineet Jindal also appeared for the petitioners. 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. 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.

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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 XII 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 X and the last-attempted Class XII board examination. 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 X board examination and 60 per cent of theory marks scored in the last attempted Class XII 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.

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The top court was then hearing a separate plea filed by a private candidate from Al Jubail, Saudi Arabia, who had challenged CBSE's failure to declare his Class XII improvement examination results as per the original evaluation scheme. The Class XII 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.