A staff in one hand and placards in the other, a group of visually-impaired students marched to the Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE) office at Preet Vihar on November 15 to protest against negligence at the recently held National Eligibility Test (NET). The NET exam, conducted by the CBSE on November 5, saw widespread violation of Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (MSJE) guidelines for the differently-abled, as a lot of bright candidates failed to give the exam because their scribes were prevented from entering the examination hall, and in many cases were not paid the writer fee sanctioned by the CBSE itself.

“When I brought my scribe along, the invigilator, also the principal of Jain Bharti Modern School, said ‘if you want your exam to be done in the right manner, ask your scribe to go away’,” complained Dharmavati, a Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student. Another student, Pankaj Singh Kushwara, whose exam centre was Sanskriti Public School in Chanakyapuri, also had the same experience. “The officials asked my scribe to leave if I wanted to write the exam. I stayed outside the examination hall and said that if my scribe is not allowed in, I won’t give the exam. After 15 minutes of argument, my scribe was allowed to enter and write the exam with me. However, the scribe hasn’t been paid till date,” Kushwara said.

Two days after the examination, JNU’s Visually-Challenged Students’ Forum wrote to the CBSE explaining how blind candidates and their scribes faced harassment at exam centres. As the forums’ effort went in vain, the students were forced to take the matter to the CBSE office.

The protesters also raised other demands, such as re-examination and adoption and implementation of the MSJE memorandum for conducting the NET exam. Shivam Agarwal, the convener of the movement, said “despite the rules clearly mentioned by MSJE, several exam centres are flouting the guidelines to earn money”. Since the protesters remained adamant on their demand to meet a higher official from the CBSE, Jai Prakash Chaturvedi, legal and administrative deputy secretary of the CBSE, met five students who explained the grievance of the visually-impaired students because of autocratic and unfriendly functioning of the CBSE.

According to one student, the CBSE shamefully admitted that it has reformed its policy and scrapped the provision of test booklets in braille for the visually-impaired, whereas the MSJE office memorandum clearly says that “persons with disabilities should be given the option of choosing the mode for taking the examination i.e. in Braille or on the computer or in large print or even by recording answers as the examining bodies can easily make use of technology to convert the question paper in large print, e-text, or Braille and also convert Braille text to English or regional languages”.

“The Board has listened to the concerns of the students and demanded 14 days to look into the matter and take stringent action against the authorities concerned. The Board also assured reimbursement of writer fee to all candidates who had been denied the same as a result of unjust practice and harassment by the authority,” said Agarwal. He asserted that “if our demands are not fulfilled within the given time frame, we will be forced to go to court”. The protesters also want the Board to reprimand all guilty exams centres and seek an explanation for their unlawful behaviour. They asked the Board to convey the same to the National Testing Agency when they hand over charge.