The Delhi High Court refused to hear a plea seeking a direction to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to publish the rationale document on Class X assessment criteria, saying, “Litigation is not a game of chance.”
A two-judge vacation bench comprising Justice Manmohan and Justice Navin Chawla, however, granted permission to petitioner Justice for All to withdraw the present application, with liberty to move an application for early hearing of the writ petition before the Roster Bench.
The Bench expressed its unhappiness that no application for any interim relief was filed in the beginning with the writ petition, and now filed this application at the ‘eleventh hour’. “Litigation is not a game of chance…..You espouse petition on genuine causes. You have to maintain very high standards if you’re evoking public interest litigations. You can’t become an ordinary litigant,” said the Bench.
The interim application has been moved in the petition filed by Justice for All, an organization of lawyers and social activists dedicated to the cause of the common man and particularly to the rights of the children relating to education and health, through Advocates Shikha Sharma and Khargesh B. Jha.
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The court was of the opinion that the issues raised in the plea are substantial enough and require adjudication, and thereby, issued notice to the respondents. It is averred that the Board has not yet modified its arbitrary policy of moderation of marks for Class X students based on previous performance, which is in violation of Article 21 of the Constitution. It is further averred that the present system of evaluation lacks transparency as the students have no option to know what the base of their evaluation was.
In light of the above, the petitioner organization seeks interim relief in the form of direction to the schools affiliated to the Board to publish the rationale document for devised criteria for the assessment of students of Class X on their respective websites, before calculating the result and uploading the same on the CBSE portal. It further prays for a grievance redressal mechanism from the Board for students to avail of.