SC Stays Class 11 Offline Examinations in Kerala
NEW DELHI, Sept 3: The Supreme Court on Friday asked the Kerala government to put on hold its decision to start class 11 examinations physically from Monday.
Terming the prevailing Covid-19 in the southern-most state as “alarming,” the apex court ordered an interim stay on the state government’s decision. The apex court pointed out that “cases in Kerala are about 70 per cent cases of the country” and expressed concern that “children of this age cannot be exposed to such risk.”
“Prima facie we find force in submission made by petitioner that the state government has not seriously considered the prevailing situation before having a physical exam proposed to be conducted in September this year. As we couldn’t get a satisfactory response from counsel for the state in this regard, we grant interim relief staying the offline exam for till next date of hearing,” said a bench of Justices A M Khanwilkar, Hrishikesh Roy, and C T Ravikumar.
The next hearing in the case is scheduled on September 13.
Kerala’s overall Covid cases have breached 41 lakh as its consistently high number of daily infections showed no signs of a let-up, with the state witnessing over 30,000 cases for the past one week.
The state, which recorded the country’s first coronavirus case in early 2020, reported 32,097 new infections and 188 deaths on Thursday, which pushed the total infection count to 41,22,133 and the fatalities to 21,149.
The Kerala High Court had earlier refused to interfere with the government’s decision to conduct offline exams saying that conducting examination was a matter of government policy and no interference was warranted.”
The top court has now passed the order on an appeal filed by advocate Rasoolshan challenging the decision of the high court.
(Manas Dasgupta)
