The Karnataka High Court on Friday set aside a single bench order which stopped the state government from conducting board exams for students of class 5, 8 and 9 and 11 of the schools affiliated to the State Board.
A division bench comprising Justice K Somashekhar and Justice Rajesh Rai K thus allowed the state’s appeal and directed the government to hold the remaining assessment for classes 5,8,9 students. Meanwhile, board exams for Class 11 were already completed during the litigation.
The court has directed the state to resume the process for 11th standard also. In addition, the Court has ordered that stakeholders will have to be consulted before notifying the assessment for upcoming years.
The Karnataka High Court observed that these exams cannot be viewed as board exams in the conventional sense. It also held that the state, being the appropriate authority, has only prescribed guidelines for conduct of the exams and nothing else in the notifications issued last year, were earlier struck down by the single-judge.
The Karnataka government had brought out two notifications dated October 6 and October 9, 2023 appointing the KSEAB (Karnataka School Examination & Assessment Board) as competent authority to conduct the Summative Assessment-2 exams.
The aforesaid decision was challenged before the High Court and a Single Judge had quashed the government notifications. Nonetheless, in the state’s appeal to a Division Bench, the Single Judge’s judgment was stayed. Furthermore, challenging the Division bench order, organisations of private schools and parents filed special leave petitions before the Supreme Court which put a hold on the exams by setting aside the interim order.
In the appeal, the state government argued that board exams are in students’ interest and if the exam is to be quashed now, the respective schools will have to draw the exams for the students. The appeal noted that it is not that exams will not be held and that now they will have to tell government school teachers to set the exams paper but the standards will drop.