"Every Punjabi is hurt by this": Punjab Education Minister Harjot Singh Bains on CBSE's Draft Policy

Chandigarh (Punjab) [India], February 27 : Punjab Education Minister Harjot Singh Bains has objected to CBSE's draft policy for Class 10 board exams in the 2025-26 academic session, criticising the exclusion of Punjabi from the list of main subjects and warning that CBSE certificates will be invalid in Punjab if the language is clubbed with foreign languages.
Speaking to ANI, Bains said, "CBSE published a draft policy for Class 10 for the academic session 2025-26, that the examinations would be held twice - in February and May... CBSE says that there will be 5 main subjects - Science, Math, Social Science, English and Hindi. The exams for these 5 subjects will be held as it is done at present. Besides these, they formed 2 sub-groups. One group has a regional language and a foreign language. The other group has vocational courses... The exam for regional and foreign languages will be held on the same day."
Criticising the move, he added, "If you want to study Punjabi and Mandarin, exams for both will be held on the same day. You removed the state's main language from the list of main subjects... The group of regional and foreign languages has Punjabi missing from it... BJP Punjab tweets from its official handle that there was a clerical mistake... Punjabi is the language of not just Punjab, it is spoken in J&K, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, UP, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata... I have written a strong letter to Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. I said that this was not a clerical mistake and we wanted action against the officer who did this. Every Punjabi is hurt by this."
Bains further stated that the Punjab government has made it mandatory for all boards operating in the state to include Punjabi as a main subject in Class 10.
"Punjab Government has issued its own notification that all Boards in Punjab, if they want to impart education in Punjab, will have to have Punjabi as the main subject in Class 10... You can't club it with any foreign language. Otherwise, your CBSE certificate will be null and void," he warned.
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on Wednesday issued an addendum to the draft policy on conducting two board exams for Class 10, clarifying that all languages will continue to be offered in the 2025-26 academic session.
The national board stated that the list of languages in the draft was only indicative, implying that it was not final. CBSE confirmed that it would continue to offer all languages, including Punjabi, Russian, Nepali, Limboo, Lepcha, Sindhi, Malayalam, Odia, Assamese, Kannada, Kokborok, Telugu, Arabic, and Persian, in addition to those mentioned under the "Regional and Foreign languages" group.
On Tuesday, CBSE proposed an important reform in the Class 10 examination system, introducing two board exams from the 2025-26 academic session.
The move is aligned with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and aims to reduce academic pressure by allowing students to improve their scores. The proposal was discussed in a high-level meeting at the Ministry of Education, chaired by the Union Minister of Education.
A draft policy has been uploaded on the CBSE website, inviting feedback from schools, teachers, parents, and students until 9th March 2025. The NEP 2020 suggests holding Class 10 and 12 board exams twice a year to reduce student stress and provide more opportunities for improvement, focusing on competency-based assessment instead of rote learning. This approach allows students to retain their best score while making exams more flexible and student-friendly.