NIOS must declare results of current academic year by August 7: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court on Wednesday said the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) must ensure that results of the current academic year are declared by August 7.

A bench headed by Justice A M Khanwilkar was informed that NIOS has issued a notification on July 10 cancelling the secondary and senior secondary examinations, which were earlier rescheduled, amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Considering the fact that...NIOS has already issued notification on July 10, 2020, after institution of these petition(s), nothing survives for consideration in the present writ petition(s) except to observe that...NIOS must ensure that the result for the current academic year is declared not later than August 7, 2020," said the bench, also comprising Justices Dinesh Maheshwari and Sanjiv Khanna.

"In other words, the time-line for declaring the results by...NIOS is now specified as August 7," the bench said.

The NIOS, in its notification, had said that consequent upon the prevailing pandemic situation in wake of COVID-19 spread, it has been decided that "conduct of March 2020 secondary and senior secondary course public examination rescheduled to commence from July 17, 2020 and further postponed, now stands cancelled".

The apex court passed the order while hearing two petitions which have raised issues of NIOS classes X and XII examinations in wake of the pandemic.

One of the petitions had sought the top court's direction for cancelling the pending exams to be conducted by NIOS and also for declaration of results of classes X and XII examinations.

It had said conducting the remaining examinations amid the pandemic would pose health risk to the students.