New Delhi: Delhi High Court Friday declined to direct the reopening of the CBSE Class XII re-evaluation portal amid the controversy surrounding the board’s On-Screen Marking (OSM) system, observing that such a move could delay results and affect lakhs of students across the country.Hearing a petition alleging irregularities in the evaluation process, a vacation bench comprising Justice Neena Bansal Krishna and Justice Madhu Jain noted that reopening the verification and re-evaluation window at this stage could have far-reaching consequences for students awaiting undergraduate admissions.“Opening the portal may impact 17.8 lakh students who have appeared, as their results may get delayed,” the court observed.The bench further remarked, “For you, it’s one week, but the entire process gets delayed by a month. It is not just one step; it leads to delays in multiple stages. If you enter now, the results will be pushed back. Let individual students approach the court with specific grievances.”The petition was filed by National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) president Vinod Jhakhar, seeking directions to reopen the portal and allow manual rechecking and physical verification of answer sheets in cases where discrepancies were alleged in scanned copies and evaluation.Opposing the plea, the Centre and the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) argued that reopening the process would disrupt ongoing evaluation and adversely affect admission timelines. Appearing for the board, solicitor general Tushar Mehta submitted that over 1.7 lakh students had already applied for revaluation and more than 3.8 lakh answer sheets had been processed.He emphasised that delays at any stage would have a cascading effect, as undergraduate admissions are based on these results.On the issue of maintainability, advocate Muhammad Ali Khan, appearing for the NSUI, argued that many affected students were unable to individually approach the court. He also claimed the portal had witnessed glitches when it was open and said the plea sought only a brief extension.The court, however, refused interim relief, indicating that students with specific grievances could seek redress through appropriate legal channels.The OSM system has come under scrutiny following complaints of blurred scans, missing pages, mismatched answer sheets and alleged evaluation errors.
