With the view of deferring the class 10 board examinations in Tamil Nadu amid the COVID-19 outbreak and lockdown, the Teachers' Association in the state has filed its petition before the Madras High Court and sought the directive from the state's top judicial body to postpone the board exams by two months.

The petition comes at a high time when the state is ten days ahead of conducting the board exams as per the schedule issued by the school education department. The association has disclosed its objections to the court on asking the deferment for the exams. The association's president has said that the school education department has identified 12,548 schools to conduct board exams across the state.

As per the order and standard operating protocols to maintain the social distancing norms, only ten students will be allowed in a classroom, and based on this calculation, the department would require 97,000 classrooms to accommodate 9.79 lakh students for exams. 

In his petition, the petitioner stated that it's not possible to disinfect and sanitize these many classrooms frequently and the lack of proper sanitation would add more risks for students, teachers, and families.

By citing that it becomes necessary to conduct classroom revisions and refresher classes to the students as the backward and underprivileged students won't be able to attend and cope up with the online classes, the association said that many teachers have been stranded in their native towns and they can't be able to report to schools and examination duties in the wake of the lockdown.

The petitioner has claimed that if the government goes with the schedule without deferring the exams, people involved around the exams including teachers, students, parents would be burdened to face more difficulties. According to the association, the government would deploy 2.3 lakh invigilators for class 10 board exams.

The reports say that some of the teachers' associations have demanded the government not to cancel the exams but to postpone it till the spread of the pandemic gets contained and the petitioner has also added that the state government hasn't consulted the teachers over conducting the exams. The petition has been one on the fray of scores of petitions that reiterated to defer the exams.

The High court has postponed the hearing to June 11. The government has pressed that it would go as per the schedule. The government has earlier deferred the exams two times due to the lockdown. As per the latest schedule, class 10 board exams have been scheduled from June 15 to June 25 and the government has stated that it would be arranging special transports to the ferry the students to the examination centers and the education department would be issuing hall tickets on Thursday for the students appearing for board exams.