Delhi High Court seeks response from CBSE, Centre on NSUI plea on On-Screen Marking system

2 min readNew DelhiUpdated: Jun 8, 2026 04:20 PM IST

The CBSE, through its counsel M A Niyazi, opposed the PIL on its maintainability, with the counsel saying, “It is a student wing of a political party. (File Photo)

The Delhi High Court Monday issued notice to Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and the Centre seeking their response to a public interest litigation by the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) calling for an independent probe into alleged “large-scale irregularities, deficiencies, technical issues and grievance-related failures” concerning the On-Screen Marking (OSM) system.”

The CBSE, through its counsel M A Niyazi, opposed the PIL on its maintainability, with the counsel saying, “It is a student wing of a political party. We do not want education to be politicised like this.”

A division bench of Justices Neena Bansal Krishna and Madhu Jain, however, issued notice to the respondents. The court will hear the matter next on June 12.

The PIL, filed on May 29, seeks the court’s direction to permit manual rechecking and physical verification of answer sheets in cases where students dispute the correctness of the scanned copies or the evaluation process. It also seeks the court’s direction to keep the portal open for verification and re-evaluation of answer sheets for affected students for one month.

Niyazi countered that the portal cannot be kept open “indefinitely” and said that students’ grievances are being addressed.

The NSUI has submitted that “students cannot be made to suffer because of deficiencies in a system introduced by the authorities themselves”.

Citing a decline in pass percentage of Class 12 students, the Congress’ student wing has submitted in its plea that the “significant fall in performance assumes relevance because the present examination cycle was amongst the first large-scale implementations of the On-Screen Marking system and was followed by unprecedented concerns regarding evaluation accuracy, scanned answer books, portal glitches and verification-related grievances raised by students across the country.”

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“The said decline, viewed alongside the subsequent events and complaints, raises serious issues warranting examination and independent scrutiny by this Hon’ble Court,” the NSUI has asserted.

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Sohini Ghosh is a Senior Correspondent at The Indian Express. Previously based in Ahmedabad covering Gujarat, she recently moved to the New Delhi bureau, where she primarily covers legal developments at the Delhi High Court

Professional Profile

Background: An alumna of the Asian College of Journalism (ACJ), she previously worked with ET NOW before joining The Indian Express.

Core Beats: Her reporting is currently centered on the Delhi High Court, with a focus on high-profile constitutional disputes, disputes over intellectual property, criminal and civil cases, issues of human rights and regulatory law (especially in the areas of technology and healthcare).

Earlier Specialty: In Gujarat, she was known for her rigorous coverage in the beats of crime, law and policy, and social justice issues, including the 2002 riot cases, 2008 serial bomb blast case, 2016 flogging of Dalits in Una, among others.

She has extensively covered health in the state, including being part of the team that revealed the segregation of wards at the state’s largest government hospital on lines of faith in April 2020.

With Ahmedabad being a UNESCO heritage city, she has widely covered urban development and heritage issues, including the redevelopment of the Sabarmati Ashram

Recent Notable Articles (Late 2025)

Her recent reporting from the Delhi High Court covers major political, constitutional, corporate, and public-interest legal battles:

High-Profile Case Coverage

She has extensively covered the various legal battles - including for compensation under the aegis of North East Delhi Riots Claims Commission - pertaining to the 2020 northeast Delhi riots, as well as 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

She has also led coverage at the intersection of technology and governance, and its impact on the citizenry, from, and beyond courtrooms — such as the government’s stakeholder consultations for framing AI-Deepfake policy.

Signature Style

Sohini is recognized for her sustained reporting from courtrooms and beyond. She specialises in breaking down dense legal arguments to make legalese accessible for readers. Her transition from Gujarat to Delhi has seen her expand her coverage on regulatory, corporate and intellectual property law, while maintaining a strong commitment to human rights and lacuna in the criminal justice system.

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