(This story originally appeared in on Jul 04, 2016)

NEW DELHI: Is the Central Board of Secondary Education , the largest body for conducting school exams in India, inflating marks to safeguard its students from a "disadvantage" on the assumption that other boards are doing so too?The 'topper scam' in Bihar board and reports that up to 80 per cent of students so far admitted in DU's Shri Ram College of Commerce are from Tamil Nadu board, point to an unhealthy competition among various school boards to be 'liberal' in marking answer sheets and grant extra marks in the name of 'standardisation'.Consider this: CBSE gave as many as 16 extra marks in the class XII maths exam this year in the all-India set of papers and 15 marks in the Delhi set during the process of standardisation. In nine subjects, marks were 'standardised' up by more than 10 per cent. As a result of the standardisation, a student with 77 marks in mathematics may have ended up getting 93 marks on the result sheet. Similarly, a student of business studies who would have otherwise got 80 marks, may have finally got as much as 92 marks in the subject.Although CBSE doesn't bunch subjects according to streams, a candidate with physics, chemistry , mathematics and English core from Delhi region may have ended up with a cumulative of 42 'extra' marks, a spike of over 10 percentage points in best of four aggregate.Similarly, a student from the all-India pool with accountancy, business studies, economics, mathematics and English core combination could have a cumulative 49 'moderated' marks, again a nearly 10 percentage point gain overall.While moderation of marks has always existed to even out different levels of difficulty and other factors in an exam of such huge scale, sources said the exercise was conducted judiciously in the past. "It would never lead to an increase of more than five marks," said a former CBSE chairman.One of the reasons cited by CBSE sources for such huge jumps in marks was that students of other boards were being given both 'moderation' and 'grace' liberally , which according to former CBSE chiefs "is against the spirit of moderation".Officially , CBSE denied that its standardisation process was in part a response to the liberal marking by other boards.However, the minutes of the board's result committee meeting belies this claim. It says, "...members were of the opinion that the statistics shown will lead to CBSE's students in disadvantageous position in higher education in comparison to the students of other boards (like ICSE, UP board etc) who had given both moderation and grace liberally to their students." TOI has a copy of the minutes. Admitting to a growing competition among boards, former CBSE chairman Ashok Kumar Ganguly has called up the HRD ministry and the Council of Boards of School Education in India to intervene."There is a very unhealthy competition going on between the state and national boards. This should be nipped in the bud. We have seen what is happening in one of the colleges, where 75 per cent to 80 per cent of students are from a single board. This calls for a rationalization of marks before things worsen," Ganguly said.Also there seems to be inconsistencies in difficulty level between the question papers of the all-India and Delhi regions. Replying to TOI's queries, CBSE contradicted itself.To one query it said the exercise aimed to "level up the mean achievements in the set-wise performance of the candidates attributable to the difference in the difficulty level of different set of question papers in the multiple sets scheme." To another question, it replied, "There is no inconsistency in question paper design and difficulty level of the question papers administered under the All India Scheme, vis-a-vis the question papers administered anywhere."So, what explains the 11 moderated marks for the all India question paper in biology as against zero for Delhi region, or 12 marks for Delhi students in English (core) to zero for others, if the difficulty levels were the same? "Moderation should never exceed 5 per cent. Its specific purpose is in case of difference in difficulty level within different sets of question papers and not because other boards are giving high marks. Let CBSE put up on its website the moderated marks for each subject and the reasons," said Ganguly.Calling for strict guidelines for school boards, Ganguly added that in case there were no multiple sets of question papers, as is the case in many state boards, "there is no business of moderation".