TED News Desk, New Delhi: The Supreme Court of India on Monday decreed that the compartment examinations for Class 12th will be held between 22nd and 29th September, 2020. This decision would mean that the admissions for various bachelor and diploma courses would be over by the time students have appeared for these exams. This will result in about five lakh students not being eligible for college admissions this year.
12th compartment exam dates in the Supreme Court: the timeline
Compartment examinations are the board’s second chance, taken by candidates who fall short in a subject as well as by those hoping to improve marks awarded under the year’s substitute assessment scheme. In an ordinary year the timing barely matters. In 2020 it collided with an admissions calendar that the pandemic had already compressed, which is how the 12th compartment exam dates and college cut-offs came to be argued about in the same Supreme Court hearing. For the students involved, the question was never whether they would sit the papers, but whether a result arriving in October would still buy a seat anywhere.
The 2020 cohort was unusually broad. Because the board could not hold its main examinations, final marks were computed under a substitute assessment scheme, and Class 12 candidates unhappy with those computed marks were allowed to sit the September papers to improve them, Deccan Herald reported. Class 10 students were given no such improvement option. That widened the pool well beyond the usual compartment list and raised the stakes of every week of delay.
Two members of the bench that passed the judgement, Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dinesh Maheshwari said, “The board can ask colleges to give provisional admissions or wait for the results to be declared”. However, a senior advocate opposed the statement, saying that the results will be provided by some ‘hybrid system of evaluation’ as CBSE could not hold main exams due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Court stated that the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE)’s decision of conducting compartment exams during these times was a potential safety issue, and instructed it to hold it until the due date. This also implies that the appearing students would not be able to apply for college admissions, as it requires 12th passing or provisional certificates.
Meanwhile, CBSE has disagreed upon this, stating to the court that “All necessary measures and safeguards are being undertaken for the students, in view of COVID-19 epidemic”. Unlike earlier, where a single room could accommodate 40 students, only 12 students will now sit in a single room. In addition to that, all safety precautions will also be taken care of. Also, the number of examination centres has increased by 575 to 1,278, more than twice the previous numbers.
However, the Supreme Court hasn’t given a final verdict, having asked the education board to provide an affidavit in the response to the plea. What now remains to be seen, is how will the fate of about 5 lakh students, which is currently hanging in balance, turn out.
The admissions clock behind the dispute
The pressure came from the university calendar. Under the University Grants Commission’s revised schedule for first-year undergraduate and postgraduate students, released in the last week of September, admissions were to be completed by 31 October and the first semester was to begin by 1 November, with six-day teaching weeks and curtailed vacations to claw back lost time, Deccan Herald reported. A candidate without a pass certificate when a university such as the University of Delhi closes its lists has nothing to show an admissions office, whatever marks arrive later. That is why the 12th compartment exam dates and the UGC deadline had to be read together, and why petitioners wanted the papers brought forward or the results fast-tracked.
The UGC calendar carried its own conditions. The 1 November start was subject to the Home Ministry’s decisions on reopening campuses, failing which first-year teaching would begin online. Either way, the administrative machinery of admission, verification of certificates included, was to be wound up in October. For a compartment candidate, a provisional admission of the kind the bench floated would depend on each college’s willingness to hold a seat against a result that might never come good, a discretion exercised unevenly across thousands of institutions.
Since then: results in eight days
The exams went ahead on schedule, beginning on 22 September. During the hearings the Supreme Court told the board to declare the compartment results quickly and asked the UGC to make sure successful candidates could still be admitted, observing that “these are exceptional times”, according to Deccan Herald. CBSE undertook to publish the results by 10 October and beat its own deadline, declaring them on 9 October.
Of the 1.16 lakh candidates who registered, 1.05 lakh appeared, 87,849 of them compartment candidates and the rest seeking to improve assessment marks, and 59.43 per cent passed. A board official described the turnaround as a record time of eight days. What began as a Supreme Court fight over 12th compartment exam dates and a stalled admission season ended with marksheets out before the UGC’s October deadline expired, though for students chasing specific colleges the anxious wait for vacant seats carried on.
The episode left a quieter lesson for the board and the regulator. A results pipeline that normally takes weeks was compressed into days once a court deadline concentrated minds, and the UGC showed that an admissions calendar could flex when a few lakh students stood to lose a year. Both precedents mattered, because the pandemic was far from finished with India’s examination system, and the machinery built in September 2020, smaller rooms, more centres, faster marking, became the template the board would reach for whenever disruption returned.
