SC stays Karnataka board exam results of four classes, says state ‘playing with students’ futures’

The Supreme Court on Monday stayed a March 22 order of the Karnataka High Court upholding the conduct of board examinations for Classes 5, 8, 9 and 11 in schools affiliated with the state-run Karnataka School Examination and Assessment Board, Live Law reported.

The court also ordered that the results of these board examinations, which resumed on the High Court’s orders last month, be kept in abeyance by schools and not communicated to the parents of students. The order was passed by a bench of Justices Bela M Trivedi and Pankaj Mithal in response to petitions against the High Court’s ruling.

The court added that the Karnataka government appeared to be “anyhow bent on playing with the future of the students” and that it had caused physical and mental agony to students, parents, teachers and school managements.

A division bench of the High Court had, on March 22, accepted the Karnataka government’s argument that the examinations could not be seen as board examinations in the conventional sense and dismissed petitions by the Registered Unaided Private Schools Management Association Karnataka seeking to stop them.

The High Court had said that for an examination to be considered as a board exam, the results would need to be publicly displayed, their answer papers assessed...

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