The demand to cancel Assam board exams grows louder as a group of class 10 and 12 students have moved the Supreme Court seeking scrapping of the board examinations.
In their plea, the students have said that they are being forced to appear in the exams amid a threat to their lives due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
"In the interest of the safety of lakhs of students and their parents, it is better to cancel the exams. The government's statement that Covid positivity rate below 2 per cent has no relevance", the plea read.
This comes days after the state government had announced that it will hold the class 10 and 12 board exams in July with reduced subjects if the COVID-19 positivity rate comes down to 2%.
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma however said that if the positivity rate stays above 2% on July 1, the board exams will be cancelled.
Earlier last week, a Twitter storm broke out where thousands of Tweeple comprising mainly students have demanded the cancellation of Class 10 conducted under State Education Board of Assam (SEBA) and 12 board exams held under Assam Higher Secondary Educational Council (AHSEC).
The Twitter storm on #CancelAssamBoardExams led to over 1.2 million tweets in a single day.
While several states have cancelled or deferred the state board examinations, Assam is yet to take a final call on whether examinations will be held.
So far, at least eleven states have cancelled their examinations which include, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Goa, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, while, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, and Kerala have conducted their respective board examinations.
As per reports and based on the analysis of several hundreds of comments, students are undergoing mental turmoil due to the suspense and the delay regarding the board exams.Earlier this year, the HSLC and HS examinations were scheduled to begin on May 11 but were postponed due to the prevailing Covid situation of the state.
