The Delhi High Court made the observations while dismissing the plea of a student studying in a CBSE-affiliated school in Muscat. The Delhi High Court recently observed that 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. A single judge bench of Justice C Hari Shankar in its January 5 order observed, “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 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,” said the bench. The bench observed it would be “debatable” whether the Central Board of Secondary Education would ever, in such a case, be in a position to announce the final results of all students. The HC made the observations while dismissing a student’s plea who was studying in a school located in Muscat, Oman, affiliated with the CBSE. The student and her father had moved the HC seeking direction to the CBSE to correct her internal assessment marks in Social Studies for Class 10 in the academic year 2019-2020. In July 2020, the school addressed a communication to the CBSE stating that it had erroneously uploaded the internal assessment marks of seven students, including the petitioner student, as 18 out of 20 instead of 20 out of 20 asking the board to carry out the necessary corrections at its end. The CBSE responded to the school in August 2020 saying it was not possible to accede to the request to change the internal assessment marks of the seven candidates given its January 30, 2020, and November 8, 2019 circulars. The HC after perusing the CBSE’s circulars said the education board was clear and categorical and “do not allow any change in the internal assessment marks for a student as uploaded by the school on the website of the CBSE”. “The schools have been advised to be careful while uploading the marks, as once the marks are uploaded, no correction would be allowed. This advisory finds a place in both the circulars dated 8 November 2019 and 30 January 2020 of the CBSE,” the court noted. “Para 8 of the Circular dated 8 November 2019 specifically stipulates, in the matter of the marks relating to internal assessment in Classes X and XII, that no request from the school stating that wrong marks have been uploaded, would be entertained once the marks already stood uploaded on the CBSE’s website. The marks once uploaded would be treated as final for preparing the result of the CBSE.” The HC said the restriction on subsequent corrections is in the “public interest” and the schools are advised to be careful while uploading the marks. The court added that while it “empathises” with the student it “regrets its inability to come to her aid”. The petitioners’ counsel had argued that the student cannot be subjected to prejudice on account of the error committed by the school and that it wasn’t disputed that the student had been awarded 20 instead of 18 marks in the internal assessment in Social Studies. He argued that the school had also acknowledged the error. The counsel said therefore the CBSE was not justified in adopting a rigid stance and citing its circulars as a ground to not correct the internal assessment marks as entered on its record, blind to the adverse effect of a student’s marks being wrongly reflected in the CBSE certificate.