A petition has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking cancellation of all pending examinations by the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) due to COVID 19.
The petition has been filed by Neil Varun Namburu, father of a student enrolled with NIOS, challenging the NIOS notification of June 30 postponing Secondary and Senior Secondary Board examinations on account of the COVID-19 pandemic. The petitioner has urged the court for a direction to cancel the said examinations.
The petitioner has submitted: “The decision of NIOS to not cancel the board examination but to further postpone it, is bad and harsh, as it not only ignores the pandemic situation and difficulty faced by the students in appearing for board examinations, but will deprive students from securing admission in higher education because of delay in declaration of results.”
The petitioner, in order to buttress his case, has relied upon the order of the Supreme Court dated June 26, 2020, where the court had affirmed the notification of the Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE) to cancel all pending board examinations for classes X and XII. Further, a similar decision has been taken by ICSE, the notification of which is still pending.
The petitioner has further pointed out that NIOS’ notification was released after the order of the Supreme Court, and instead of cancelling the examinations, it chose to postpone it “till further orders”.
The petitioner has alleged that the decision of the HRD Ministry and NIOS of not cancelling the examination is “ex-facie illegal, arbitrary, malicious and malafide, to say the least. Thus, deliberately jeopardizing the life, wellbeing and the very existence of the NIOS students.”
-India Legal Bureau