The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed that CBSE be served with an advance copy of the petition seeking online Class X and XII board exams by all boards instead of an in-person exercise in view of the pandemic.

A bench headed by Justice A.M. Khanwilkar, while asking the petitioner’s advocate Prashant Padmanabhan to serve an advance copy, said it would take up the matter on Wednesday.

An advance copy is being served to CBSE in the case so that the board can come out with its stance on the issue instead of seeking time to respond in view of the urgency stressed by the petitioner.

On Monday, when the counsel had pleaded for urgent hearing, a bench headed by Chief Justice N.V. Ramana had listed the matter for hearing on February 25.

However, on Tuesday the counsel made a fresh plea for urgent listing by Wednesday on the ground that some states such as Madhya Pradesh had already commenced their board exams in the offline mode. The bench accordingly agreed to hear the matter on Wednesday.

The court was dealing with the petition filed by child rights activist Anubha Shrivastava Sahai.

Besides seeking the setting up of a committee for deciding the proper evaluation of the internal assessment of regular students and a formula for assessing the marks obtained by compartmental students, the petitioner also wanted a direction to the UGC to appoint a committee to decide the date of admissions for various professional courses keeping in view the board exams.

The petitioner pleaded that the present situation was still not conducive for exams in offline mode and there had been uncertainty among the students in this regard.

It was pointed out that many state boards had neither declared the exam schedule nor given any indication about the mode of exams so far.