The court dismissed the petitions saying that it would desist from interfering in the decisions of the CBSE: PTI New Delhi: The Supreme Court Wednesday dismissed five petitions challenging the Central Board of Secondary Education's (CBSE) decision to conduct a re-examination for the class XII Economics paper after an alleged leak.
The top court said it is the discretion of the CBSE to conduct the re-examination and the same cannot be challenged in the court.
"In the writ petition, we cannot order the CBSE to not to hold the re-examination. This is not the jurisdiction of this court to direct the CBSE not to conduct the examination. It is the discretion of the CBSE or the concerned authority," it said.
A bench of justices S A Bobde and L Nageswara Rao also asked the students who had challenged the CBSE's decision to appear in the examination, if it is being conducted.
Several petitions were filed before the apex court after the CBSE said on March 28 that the class X Maths and XII Economics papers had allegedly leaked.
The CBSE said Tuesday that it has found after assessment there was no impact of alleged paper leak of class X Maths paper and no re-examination would be held.
Besides challenging the CBSE's decision, the petitioners also wanted a CBI probe into the alleged paper leak, saying several incidents were reported from various states and Delhi Police was not competent to hold the nation-wide probe.
Besides seeking an independent probe into the leak, one of the petitioners, 15-year-old Rohan Mathew from Kochi, had also sought a direction to the CBSE to declare the results on the basis of the examinations already conducted.
The CBSE, on March 30, had announced that it would re-conduct the examination for class XII Economics throughout the country on April 25.
Mathew and two others have moved the top court seeking quashing of the CBSE's decision to re-conduct the class X Mathematics examination on several grounds, including violation of their fundamental rights.
Earlier, another plea was filed in the apex court by Reepak Kansal, a resident of Shakarpur here, challenging the decision of the CBSE to cancel and re-conduct the two papers.
"It is to be noted that this year, 16,38,428 students had appeared for the class X and 11,86,306 students for the XII examinations conducted by the CBSE examinations.
"And therefore, to penalise the entire student community for an incident which is under investigation and without completion of that investigation/enquiry and issuing a notice on March 28, 2018 (for re-exams), affects the fundamental rights of students which is arbitrary, illegal and unconstitutional," the plea said.
