The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to order the reopening of the CBSE Class XII exam verification and re-evaluation portal for students who had grievances regarding the evaluation of their answer sheets using the On- Screen Marking(OSE) system.

“We know you have some grievances but the matter is that the portal had already been opened for everybody for a certain period of time and if we allow re-opening of the portal then there would be lakhs of new claims,” a Bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana observed.

“If you don’t use the bus, you miss the bus,” added CJI Kant.

The Court was hearing a plea which challenged the manner in which CBSE introduced the online marking system for evaluation of answer sheets of students appearing for the board exams.

The plea submitted that OSM was introduced for the first time in the year 20 26 for evaluating answer sheets and teachers were neither given training nor orientation about the system before its implementation.

The plea claimed that due to introduction of digital scanning several irregularities came up such as certain pages of answer sheets were left unsceaned, scans were illegible and in many answers or pages were left unevaluated.

The petitioner submitted that due to these errors arbitary evaluations were done and scores were awarded while in many other cases answer sheets were left unevaluated altogether.

On August 14, the Court had earlier asked CBSE to see if there was any method through which they could assist the students who had problems getting admissions on the basis of their scores.

Petitioner’s counsel told the Court today that they were only seeking a one week extension for filing applications for re-evaluation.

“The website crashed and due to this reason many students could not apply for online verification of answer sheets,” the counsel for the petitioner told the Court.

However, CJI Kant said that students could have availed the opportunity of applying for re-evaluation during the period the window was open.

“Why should we direct the respondents to re-open this window for you? If you don’t use the bus, you miss the bus. The bus was open for everyone for certain time,” the Court said.

The counsel for the petitioner replied that there were some candidates who faced technical glitches. But Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the Court that during the notified window 1.68 lakh students successfully applied.

“The Delhi High Court has already rejected a similar plea. So, why should this Court interfere with the matter?” Mehta asked.

The Bench after hearing these submissions refused to intervene in the matter.

“You are saying this today. Tomorrow similar requests would come from thousands, if not lakhs. The difficulty is that admissions are over,” the Bench said.