Supreme Court asks Centre and CBSE for affidavit on OSM evaluation grievances by Monday

By Monday, the Centre and the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) must place a detailed affidavit before the Supreme Court on On-Screen Marking (OSM) grievances. The Bench recorded that ask on Friday, 21 August 2026, in a public interest litigation that has been pressing for lasting OSM rules and a workable redress route while admissions are still on.

The hearing did not, on the reporting available for this piece, release a full verbatim order for quotation. What is on record from the Friday development is the substance of the direction: a detailed affidavit covering how OSM-linked grievances and the one-week grievance window have worked in practice.

Three buckets the affidavit is meant to address

Court reporting of the Friday hearing groups the concerns into familiar problem sets. Students who filed grievances and say they got no response. Students who did not receive answer sheets or re-evaluation results. Students who could not apply at all because of access gaps — login failures, late awareness of the window, or other barriers that kept them outside the one-week frame.

Those categories matter because a short grievance window is useful only if filing is possible and a reply arrives in time for admission calendars. Class 12 scores feed into undergraduate and professional choices. Silence after a grievance can freeze a student’s next step even when the paper itself was already marked.

Background already associated with the OSM proceedings includes re-evaluation of about 1.68 lakh answer sheets. That figure is context from earlier stages of the litigation, not a fresh statistical finding announced on Friday. The new step is the affidavit deadline, not a restatement of older OSM coverage.

Admissions do not pause while the paper trail catches up

The PIL seeks lasting OSM rules and redress arrangements amid ongoing admissions. That timing is why Friday’s direction is being watched beyond the courtroom. Parents waiting on answer-sheet access or re-evaluation results still have college preference deadlines elsewhere; the affidavit will not by itself stop those calendars.

CBSE and the Ministry of Education remain the official channels for board evaluation and re-evaluation procedure. The Supreme Court’s Friday ask does not rewrite OSM guidelines on its own. It requires the Centre and CBSE to put a detailed account on affidavit covering the grievance categories listed above.

Until that affidavit is filed and the court lists the matter again, provisional or contested evaluation outcomes should not be treated as finally settled by Friday’s hearing. Allegations of non-response, missing answer sheets or access barriers stay open questions for the affidavit and further process unless the court records findings later.

What Friday decided — and what it did not

Friday’s development is a hearing step with a Monday clock. It is not a final judgment on whether OSM is valid. It is not a blanket order granting re-evaluation to every applicant. No eyewitness student reactions and no paraphrased judicial quotes beyond the affidavit direction are available in the fact set used here.

Students still waiting on answer sheets or re-evaluation should keep following CBSE’s published communication, not only social media summaries of the PIL. The Monday affidavit is the next concrete checkpoint. What the Centre and CBSE put on record — and how the Bench responds — will shape the next listing.

As of Saturday, 22 August 2026, the immediate date to watch is Monday’s affidavit filing. Further directions, if any, will follow from that paper and the court’s subsequent listing, not from Friday’s ask alone.