NEW DELHI, June 1: Even as the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) declares the Class XII and X results for this year, its functioning has come under a cloud of allegations and demands have been raised for greater transparency in its working.

Following a public interest petition filed by `Parents Forum for Meaningful Education' , a division Bench of Delhi high court last week told the Board to preserve till further orders all answer sheets of the Class XII and X examinations held in March this year.

The Bench, which is due to hear the matter again on July 30, made this observation after counsel P S Sharda appearing for the petitioners contended that the question papers for Physics, Mathematics and Chemistry and the marking schemes, which the examiners consult while checking answer scripts, were ``full of errors, putting the future of lakhs of students at stake''.

Praying for the introduction of re-evaluation of answer sheets and giving copies of evaluated answer scripts back to the examinees, the petitioners said that in 1992, the controller of examination, CBSE, had admitted that about 6.98 per cent mistakes were found in selected papers. ``These mistakes are obviously only of totalling errors because there is no other area of re-evaluation, in vogue. Taken to its logical conclusion it can well mean that out of about five lakh students who take the examination, if totalling errors alone are to be around 6.98 per cent the number of affected students would run into more than 17,000,'' the petition said.The parents' forum has also moved the court against the CBSE's multiple set paper scheme wherein two or three different question papers are given out to the examinees in a bid to prevent ``mass copying''. Further, the petitioners contended that the question papers often had different difficulty levels, and thus the children were tested on different basis, which was ``totally unfair'' to them.

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