The Delhi High Court on Friday refused to order the reopening of the Central Board of Secondary Education’s verification and re-evaluation portal for Class 12 answer sheets, saying that doing so would delay the announcement of final results, reported Live Law.

A vacation bench of Justices Neena Bansal Krishna and Madhu Jain added that it did not want to interfere with the ongoing process.

The portal was open from June 2 to June 7.

The court was hearing a petition by the National Students’ Union of India, the Congress’ student wing, alleging irregularities in the newly-introduced On-Screen Marking system.

The petition was filed against the backdrop of several discrepancies being flagged in the CBSE’s On-Screen Marking evaluation process.

Many students have alleged that the scanned copies of answer sheets uploaded by the CBSE did not match their handwriting, raising concerns about possible answer sheet mismatches. Students seeking re-evaluation also alleged that they faced portal failures, delays in payment confirmation and, in some cases, were asked to pay excess fees because of technical glitches.

Separately, a cybersecurity researcher, Nisarga Adhikary, has claimed on social media that he had discovered that the OnMark portal link was publicly accessible and that an analysis of its code showed vulnerabilities that could potentially allow accounts of examiners to be taken over.

In its petition, the NSUI has sought an independent inquiry into alleged irregularities in the OSM system, along with directions for manual rechecking and physical verification of disputed answer sheets, The Hindu reported.

It also asked the court to direct the verification and re-evaluation portal to remain open for an additional month to allow affected students to seek remedies, according to Bar and Bench.

However, the bench said on Friday that aggrieved students are free to approach the court individually, Bar and Bench reported.

“For you it is one week,” the court said. “But the whole process gets delayed by a month. You are saying let me take the step. Then of course 10 steps further are to be taken.”

Appearing for the CBSE, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the court that any extension of the process would affect nearly 17.8 lakh students who appeared for the examinations and could delay admissions to undergraduate courses.

He further said that 1.67 lakh students had already applied for evaluation and that around 3.8 lakh answer sheets were under review.

Edited by Sneha.