On Thursday, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor urged HRD minister Prakash Javadekar to exempt CBSE Class 12 students from the Economics paper re-exam on "compassionate grounds".

LETTER TO PRAKASH JAVDEKAR

The class 12 students are already in the process of preparing for competitive examinations and are under considerable stress and anxiety, and should be exempted from taking the exam again, Tharoor said in the letter to Javdekar.

"I would request you to kindly consider a similar exemption of Class 12 students from the re-examination of the Economics paper on compassionate grounds," Tharoor said in his letter.

CURRENT ANNOUNCEMENT BY CBSE

Class 10 mathematics retest, if required, would be conducted only for the Delhi-NCR region and Haryana in July, said in an official announce by CBSE chief.

However, on Tuesday it decided against conducting the retest for the mathematics paper.

Tharoor, who is a former Minister of State for Human Resource Development, urged Javadekar to hold a time-bound thorough inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the papers leak so as to ensure that appropriate punitive measures are taken at the earliest against those who are identified as being responsible for it.

"Most significantly, it will also allow us to take urgent constructive corrective steps that will be crucial in ensuring that the credibility of these examinations is reinstated," he said.

Tharoor said that for the students to be subjected to this kind of uncertainty and additional burden of re-examination due to a few miscreants, was "grossly unfair and it is therefore the duty of the government to ensure that remedial steps are taken at the earliest".

The Congress MP said many of the students have already begun preparations for subsequent competitive examinations such as NEET, scheduled on May 6, and JEE, scheduled on April 15 and 16.

"For them to be required to prepare for a paper that they have worked hard for previously, would not only be unfair to them but would in fact, be antithetical to the fundamental idea of our education system, which is that hard work and merit is always rewarded in our country," Tharoor said.

"Given the time-sensitive nature of this issue and the distress that it is causing lakhs of students across the country, I would be grateful if you could give this request your most urgent and sympathetic consideration," he urged Javadekar.