The Central Board of Secondary Education has filed an appeal before a division bench of Calcutta High Court, challenging an interim order that asked the CBSE to issue provisional affiliation to a school on the IISER-Calcutta’s Mohanpur campus in Nadia by August 14 so that it could register students who had passed Class VIII this year.

The interim order had been issued by Justice Soumen Sen on July 30 following an application submitted by Satikanta Guha Foundation (SGF), which runs the Garden High School-IISER.

In the appeal filed on August 13, the CBSE contended that Justice Sen had passed an “erroneous” and “unreasonable order” by “taking irrelevant factors into consideration” and ignoring relevant affiliation bylaws.

The board also reiterated the need for a mandatory lease deed over the land where the school is located, which Justice Sen had rejected in his July 30 order.

While the respondent, SGF, declined comments, IISER officials and guardians of the students said the CBSE was contradicting its own bylaw provision in order to harass students.

In the July 30 order, the court had rejected the need for a lease deed owing to the existence of a formal agreement between IISER-K and the SGF on November 19, 2014.