All eyes are now on the Supreme Court hearing today, Monday, April 29, seeking postponement of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) Chartered Accountancy (CA) Inter and Final examinations.

To recall, a group of students filed a petition on April 16 with the Supreme Court seeking the postponement of exams as election-related activities during the ongoing Lok Sabha Election 2024 might hinder their preparation.

This comes after the Delhi High Court dismissed a petition seeking postponement of the exams on April 8, 2024.

So, while we wait for the verdict from the apex court, let us look into what happened at the Delhi High Court hearing on April 8.

The bench, while hearing the petition, maintained that, “the mere fact that certain individual candidates may face a hardship in undertaking it cannot constitute the basis for this Court to derail the entire CA Intermediate, or Final, examination, which presently is to be undertaken by as many as 4,36,246 candidates”.

“Indeed, this Court is surprised that such a request has even been made”, it added.

A single-judge bench of Justice C Hari Shankar noted that the General Elections are held periodically and the court has “no reason”, given the past experience, to doubt the capability of the security machinery in place to ensure that the elections take place in a free and fair atmosphere.

“The plea of violation of Article 21 is based on the prediction, of the petitioners, that the entire nation is bound to be in a state of turmoil during elections. There is no basis for this presumption. We are headed for elections, not civil war,” the court further added in its order.

The bench dismissed the plea adding that the ICAI has been pro-active in ensuring that no examination is held either on the date of elections or on the date immediately prior to it and that the petition itself has “no substance”.