INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The Supreme Court announced that the verdict on the fundamental rights petitions filed seeking an order to re-conduct the 2024 Grade 5
related to the petitions, which have been filed by filed by a group of students who sat for the examination and their parents.The petitions
were heard before a judge bench comprising Justices Yasantha Kodagoda, Kumudini Wickremasinghe, and Arjuna Obeysekera over a period of three
full days.Accordingly, the presenting of oral submissions of all the attorneys for the petitioning and respondent parties were concluded
this evening (18).Thereafter, it was ordered that if there are any written submission, they be submitted before 9.00 a.m
tomorrow (19).Accordingly, it was announced that the verdict related to the peitions will be delivered on December 31.Earlier today, the
Supreme Court directed the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) to submit a comprehensive report on the ongoing investigation into the
leaking of three questions from the first question paper of the recent Grade 5 Scholarship Examination.The court instructed the CID to
submit the detailed report by 9.00 a.m
tomorrow (19).The directive was issued during the hearing this morning, where four fundamental rights petitions, filed by a group of
students who sat for the examination and their parents, seeking an order to re-conduct the examination due to the early release of the
questions, were taken up for hearing.On December 2, the Attorney General (AG) informed the Supreme Court that the Cabinet of Ministers had
considering the potential stress it could cause to the students.On September 20, an investigation was launched by the Department of
Examinations after it was alleged that three questions of one of the question papers from the exam had been leaked
Later, the initial investigation report was handed over to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), which also launched a separate
investigation into the matter.The investigations had uncovered that only three questions from the exam had been leaked in advance
However, the incident stirred controversy as a group of parents, holding press conferences and staging protests on several occasions, had
claimed that the entire question paper had been leaked.Against this backdrop, the Director of the Planning Division of the National
Institute of Education (NIE) in Maharagama and a school teacher, who were arrested by the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) over the
question paper issue, were remanded until October 22.The arrested 58-year-old NIE Director was a member of the committee which prepared the
2024 Grade 05 Scholarship Examination paper, and the 49-year-old teacher had been conducting tuition classes for Grade 05 students.The
parents raised the issue with President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, and as a result, the evaluation of the answer sheets for the scholarship
examination was suspended until the investigation was completed.On October 14, the Commissioner General of Examinations Amith Jayasundara
announced that it was decided not to re-conduct the 2024 Grade 05 Scholarship Examination
Furthermore, it had been decided to award free marks to all students for the 03 questions which were alleged to have been leaked.However in
November, the Supreme Court issued an interim order preventing the release of results of the 2024 Grade 5 Scholarship Examination.
