The Union government has written to heads of all state education board in which it advised them to stop inflating class XII marks in the name of moderation.
Anil Swarup urged all the states to stop this practice and pointed to the CBSE's commitment to avoid “bunching of marks” and “their spiking” in its evaluation of board papers in 2018.
According to Swarupʼs October 6 letter, an inter board group with representatives from CBSE, ICSE and the state boards of Gujarat, Jammu and Kashmir, Kerala, Telangana, Chhattisgarh and Manipur held two meetings in which it recommended that apart from stopping the discontinuing moderation policy, the practice of giving grace marks can be continue provided that the policy is declared publicly and weightage to extra-curricular activities is given same across all boards.
Swarup's letter is the second attempt from the Union government to stop the practice of moderation. According to the sources "the missive has been dispatched well in advance so that courts do not intervene and overturn the decision on grounds of it being last minute".