The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on Wednesday announced that board exams for private candidates will be conducted from August 16 to September 15.

The board ruled out declaring results of the private candidates on the basis of an alternative assessment policy like that for regular candidates, saying neither schools nor the CBSE has any previous assessment record for these students.

"The exams will be conducted from August 16 to September 15 and their result will also be declared in minimum possible time to avoid any difficulty to them in admission in higher education," CBSE Examination Controller Sanyam Bhardwaj said.

Earlier in the day, a group of private candidates staged a protest outside the CBSE headquarters alleging disparity between them and regular candidates.

"The CBSE will declare the result of regular students as per the policy approved by Supreme Court. In case of regular students, schools are having records of the assessment done by the schools during the current year and thus their result could be declared based on the assessment policy," Bhardwaj said.

"In case of the private candidates, neither the schools nor the CBSE have the desired records, hence, their result cannot be prepared based on the assessment policy. In case of regular students, schools have conducted a unit test, mid-term and pre-board examination and thus the performance of these students was available.

"However, in case of private candidates (there are) no records based on which their assessment could be done without conduct of examination," he added.

The board noted that issue of private candidates was also discussed in Supreme Court of India and thereafter policy was decided wherein written examination will be held for declaring result of private candidates.

"This issue was discussed in detail and the court has agreed with all petitioners. The tabulation policy for assessment of results was framed by a committee looking into all aspects of regular and private candidates," he added.

Bhardwaj said that the official notification for the exams will be issued soon.

"The UGC and the CBSE are looking into the interest of all the students and the UGC will be synchronizing admission schedule based on the result of these students as it was done by UGC in 2020," Bhardwaj said.