Responding to concerns and demands from thousands of students who have been forced to move or been stranded during the coronavirus-induced lockdown, the Union Human Resource Development Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’, on Wednesday, announced that those students can opt to take their board exams at their current places of stay.
“Class 10 and 12 students, who have to appear in the pending board exams but have moved to different states or districts during the COVID-19 lockdown when schools were closed, will be able to appear for the exams at their present places of stay. They will not be required to travel back,” the HRD Minister said. The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) will announce the modalities of registration for such requests, he added.
Officials said that the decision has been taken in view of the long distances that some students would have had to undertake and the quarantine measures that school authorities would have been forced to make. HRD ministry alone runs 661 residential Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas mostly in the rural areas and would have had to make some quarantine arrangements for their students to take the exams.
“Keeping in view the problem of the candidates who have shifted to other districts than the district of their examination centre, the CBSE has decided to shift their examination centres to their present districts. A notification will be issued by the CBSE in this regard in June. Such candidates are informed that they should remain in touch with their schools,” CBSE Secretary Anurag Tripathi said in a statement, as reported by Hindustan Times.
Earlier, the CBSE had earlier expanded its list of examination centres from 3,000 to 13,000 to allow students a wider choice of venues, and also to ensure social distancing and minimize travel. 29 pending papers of the CBSE board examinations have now been rescheduled to be held in the first two weeks of July. While the Class 12 exams will be conducted across the country, the Class 10th exams are only pending in North East Delhi, where they could not be held due to the law and order situation in the wake of protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act.
