Plea in Supreme Court for CBI probe into CBSE paper leak

A fresh plea has been moved in the Supreme Court seeking a CBI probe into the CBSE paper leak case and its order to conduct re-examination saying it was done to protect the "real culprits" in the Board.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra has said that the plea would be taken up for hearing next week.

Meanwhile, the CBSE conducted the re-examination of the economics paper of class 12 across the country today.

The petition sought to strike down the Central Board of Secondary Education's (CBSE) order to conduct the re-examination of the class 12 economics paper which was allegedly leaked last month.

The plea filed by a social activist Sanjoy Sachdev, also sought to declare the results of the students who have already appeared in the test "in good faith and trust".

"Order an enquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation to take charge of all the cases of leakage from police of various states in order to the fix the criminal liability of the respondent no.1 to 4 (Centre, CBSE, Controller of examination of the Board and the Director of CBSE) and nexus involved," the plea said.

"This order (re-examination order) appears to have been issued in order to save the skin of real culprits within the central board of secondary education or their subordinates or affiliates," the plea added.

The petition said that the re-examination order was bad in law and against the principles of law of natural justice as it was taken without the students being heard. It said the order penalises the innocent and harmless students without a fault of theirs. "No authority or the respondents ever gave any chance of hearing in the matter to lakhs of students from all over India," the plea said.

Sachdev, in his plea, said that the action of the respondents (Centre and CBSE) has put a black scar on the lives of innocent and harmless students majority of whom are minors in age throughout the country as being convicts in paper leakage, which is totally in contrast to the law of natural justice.

"If the majority of these minor students have not committed any offence or crime then why are they being treated like that and being forced to undergo re-examination," the plea said.

It also suggested that the affected students and their parents should have been given ample opportunity to appear before competent authorities in person and state truthfully in the matter, but that was not done.

Amid widespread outrage over the paper leak issue, the CBSE had on March 30 said that the re-examination of CBSE's Class 12 economics paper will be held on April 25 i.e., today.

The Delhi Police had registered separate cases on March 27 and March 28, respectively, to probe the leak of the Class 12 economics paper and Class 10 mathematics paper, following a complaint by the regional director of the CBSE.