‘Cancelling Class 10 exams against academic interest’

MUMBAI: A public interest litigation (PIL) has been moved in Bombay high court (HC) challenging the state government’s April 2021 order on cancellation of Class 10 exams across all boards, given rising Covid-19 cases in the state. The petition has claimed that the government’s decision was against the academic interest of students and would lead to problems in the admission process for Class 11 as different boards would come up with different formulae for declaration of results without conducting exams.

The PIL filed by Pune resident and retired professor Dhananjay Kulkarni through advocate Uday Warunjikar has claimed that the government’s decision would result in complete absurdity as the unequals would be treated equally if results were based on percentile or best of five formulae.

The petition has stated that if the state board for higher and secondary education would conduct the examination for Class 12 which has nearly 1.4 million students across the state there was no justification for cancelling Class 10 exams, which will be given by more than 1.6 million students of the state board and other students belonging to other boards as well.

Kulkarni has submitted in the petition that the decision to not conduct exams for Class 10 would also affect the admissions to diploma courses which have 1.15 million seats and will also have an adverse effect on the diploma in pharmacy course. Though the PIL was listed before HC bench on Thursday as it recused, the PIL is likely to come up for hearing next week.