Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) released a notice on Tuesday, June 19th, stating that it will not be opening the online application process on June 22nd as per the original schedule. The notification states that the delay is due to ‘administrative reasons’ and the board will notify the details of the new dates shortly.

It was reported earlier that CBSE might be approaching the High Court to seek more time to conduct the CTET 2018 examination. The need for more time was necessitated after the HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar instructed the board on June 17th to conduct the CTET 2018 examination in all 20 languages instead of just Hindi, English and Sanskrit.

In the original notification released by CBSE, students pointed out that there were just three options in languages, namely Hindi, English and Sanskrit. This created a controversy where in regional political parties, especially from Tamil Nadu, accused the board of imposition of Hindi language over regional languages.

CBSE later clarified that the phase 1 of the exam is in these three languages and phase 2 which the board was conducting later would consist of other languages. In spite of this clarification, HRD Minster instructed the CBSE to conduct the exam in all 20 languages together as it had been doing in previous years.

In should be noted that Delhi High Court in April had asked the board to conduct the CTET examination within four months. Indian Express had reported that thus CBSE might approach the court to seek more time to conduct the examination.

The board had set the CTET 2018 exam date for September 16, 2018. The online application was supposed to start on June 22nd and last date to apply was July 21st.

The CTET exam is mandatory for appointment to the Kendriya Vidyalayas and CBSE-affiliated private schools. CTET has two compulsory language sections; one to test the proficiency in the chosen medium of instruction, the second is for communication and comprehension.