New Delhi, March 19
The Supreme Court today dismissed the petition of a dyslexic Panchkula student seeking permission to use a calculator for writing his Class XII CBSE exam. Incidentally, the ICSE allows use of calculators by such students.

The apex court expressed its inability to allow only petitioner Pranjay Jain, a student of DAV School, Panchkula, the use of a calculator when 300 dyslexic students were also taking the Class XII exam. The Bench, headed by Chief Justice KG Balakrishnan, was also not convinced by the argument of senior counsel JL Gupta, who appeared for Pranjay, that the ICSE was allowing use of calculators by such students and the national education policy was also in favour of providing such a facility.

The Bench, which included Justices Deepak Verma and CP Singh, accepted the Board’s contention that its guidelines did not allow the use of calculator. It also pointed out that as many as 820 dyslexic students were appearing for the Class X and XII examinations this year. Of them, 520 were in Class X and 300 in Class XII.

According to CBSE, as many as 3,197 differently-abled students are taking its Board examinations this year. Of them, 558 are visually-impaired (309 in Class X, 249 in Class XII), 155 deaf and dumb (113 in Class X, 42 in Class XII), 1,579 handicapped (910 in Class X, 669 in Class XII) and 85 spastics (39 in Class X, 46 in Class XII). Similarly, such students had taken exams in the previous years as well without the help of calculators.