KOCHI: Coming to the rescue of a CBSE student who was denied the opportunity to apply for revaluation within the fixed time due to the delay on the board's part in serving the photocopy of the answer sheet, the Kerala High Court directed the latter to enable the petitioner to apply online. The court also directed the CBSE to make the web portal functional so as to enable the petitioner to make the application. According to the petitioner, she had submitted an application for the verification of her answer sheets of the Senior School Certificate (Class XII) examination held in March 2018.
"Upon publication of the results, the board had published a notice on its website on May 31, 2018, regarding the modalities and schedule with respect to the processes of verification and revaluation of answer books of the candidates who had appeared for the Senior School Certificate (Class XII) Examination, 2018," said the petitioner. As per the same, the first stage was to apply online for verification of marks or re-totalling between June 1 - June 5 by remitting `500 per subject.
"Thereafter, the status of re-totalling is to be made available on the website," said the petitioner.
Accordingly, the applicant had applied for verification or re-totalling of English, Chemistry and Biology answer sheets by remitting the requisite fee on June 15. Since there was no change of marks after re-totalling, she decided to apply for the photocopy of the re-evaluated answer sheet for scrutiny. "Only those candidates who had applied for verification of marks were eligible to apply online to evaluate answer books with answer keys by remitting the prescribed fee for each subject. The date fixed for applying online for the same was from June 14 to June 16," said the petitioner.
The petitioner had applied online for the photocopy of the respective evaluated answer sheets on June 15. For revaluation, the candidate needs to remit `100 per question and also specifically state the reasons to revalue such questions. "This is a very time-consuming process," said the petitioner.
However, the board had not uploaded the petitioner's answer sheets for scrutiny till June 19. At 8.30 pm on June 20, the petitioner’s father received an SMS stating the scanned copy of the answer book of few applicants will be made available by Thursday or Friday and they will be given time for revaluation. "But my answer books were not uploaded till June 21," said the petitioner. "The CBSE uploaded the answer books for scrutiny only at 11.56 am on June 23. In the meantime, the period to apply for revaluation was extended by the CBSE from June 22 to June 23."
In the petitioner’s case, meticulous scrutiny of the answer books was made impossible since there was only a span of a few hours for applying for revaluation after the uploading her answer books.
It was submitted that the petitioner could complete scrutiny of her answer books only on June 24 and therefore, she was unable to apply for revaluation.