HC comes to rescue of Karnataka student

HC comes to rescue of Karnataka student

It tells CBSE to declare result; Board had asked her to reappear for Biology paper

11/10/2020

An extreme penalty violates the rule of proportionality, the High Court ruled.

Special Correspondent Bengaluru

Observing that “a tender age student, even when delinquency is established, cannot be treated as an offender of the war crime,” the Karnataka High Court has directed the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to immediately announce the result of a student of Class XII, who was asked to reappear for an exam in one of the subjects, without announcing the result, for carrying a mobile phone inside the examination hall on March 14.

Justice Krishna S. Dixit passed the order while allowing a petition filed by Shuchi Mishra, who had appeared for the CBSE Class XII main examinations in Bengaluru.

The court directed the CBSE to immediately announce the results for the Biology exam.

The court, from the records, found that the petitioner had inadvertently carried a mobile phone inside the exam hall and had handed it over to the invigilator just before commencement of the exam, but the CBSE had treated her case as “unfair means” for “using mobile phone during examination”.

“The student’s assertion that she had deposited the mobile at 9.55 a.m., that is prior to commencement of examination, to the centre invigilator becomes evident by the fact that it was sent to her school, which in turn delivered it back to her after examination and on the same day,” the court observed.

The court also noted that the CBSE committee had not made any effort to view video footage of the exam hall, with every hall under electronic surveillance, and had denied a personal hearing to the student.

Pointing out that there was no allegation that the petitioner had clandestinely stored the examination material in the said phone for making “unfair use” of the same, the court said, “though a student is expected not to carry such instrument into the exam hall but human fallibility, more particularly in case of children going to exam with associated anxiety, needs to be kept in mind, as an extreme penalty cancelling exam violates the rule of proportionality and it shakes the consciousness of the court, to say the least.”