CBSE framed new Class 12 assessment policy for students in Gulf, Supreme Court told

Newdelhi,UPDATED: Jun 22, 2026 17:24 IST

The Centre told the Supreme Court on Monday that the CBSE has framed a new policy to evaluate private Class 12 students affected by the cancellation of board examinations in Gulf countries because of the recent Iran-US war. The policy is meant for students in similar situations whose examinations were cancelled because of the regional conflict.

A bench of Justices SVN Bhatti and Vipul M Pancholi was told by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre and the CBSE, that the policy was notified on June 21 and includes a separate formula for private candidates. The court was hearing a plea by a private candidate from Saudi Arabia who had challenged the CBSE's failure to declare his Class XII improvement examination result under the earlier assessment scheme.

Mehta said that for subjects in which the examination could not be held, the performance of private candidates would be assessed on the basis of the marks obtained in the Class 10 board examination and the last-attempted Class 12 board examination. Under the new policy, marks in cancelled subjects will be calculated as 40 per cent of the theory marks scored in Class 10 and 60 per cent of the theory marks scored in the last attempted Class 12 board examination.

He told the court that two categories of students were largely affected by the cancellation of examinations across seven Gulf countries: regular school students and private candidates. He said the main difficulty in the case of private candidates was that they had no school to provide internal assessment records such as quarterly, half-yearly and pre-board marks, which formed the basis of the original March 27 evaluation scheme.

The plea was filed by Pransu Jigarkumar Patel, a private candidate from Al Jubail in Saudi Arabia. He had said that while the CBSE's March 27 assessment scheme covered regular students, no clarification had been issued for private candidates appearing for improvement examinations, and his result was therefore withheld as 'Result Later' (RL). He argued that the omission was arbitrary and discriminatory and had affected his higher education prospects.

Patel said that his physics and chemistry examinations were held, but the mathematics, English and computer science papers were cancelled. He said the two papers he wrote were assessed on actual marks, while the three cancelled subjects were evaluated under the new formula notified on June 21.

Mehta told the bench that under the new policy, Patel's marks were higher than his earlier performance, and that the result had been sent to him by email and would also be updated in his DigiLocker. He added that any student who is not satisfied with the assessed marks can appear in the next regular examination.

When the bench asked the petitioner's counsel whether the grievance had been addressed after the new policy and the declaration of the result, advocate Vineet Jindal said the result had been declared but urged the court to protect Patel's right to seek copies of answer scripts and pursue re-evaluation under CBSE rules.

The bench said there was no such prayer in the writ petition and clarified that it could not grant relief that had not been sought. It then recorded the solicitor general's submission, disposed of the matter, and gave the petitioner liberty to pursue remedies in accordance with law if he still had any grievance.

The Class 12 board examinations had been cancelled by the CBSE in seven West Asian countries - Bahrain, Iran, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE - because of the conflict in West Asia. The new policy for private students was placed before the Supreme Court as the court considered the petition arising from that cancellation.

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