Hyderabad, Jun 8 (IANS): The Telangana government on Monday decided to promote all Class 10 students without exams as it would not be possible to conduct the exams due to spread of coronavirus in the state.

Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao decided that all the Class 10 students would be promoted to the next class by giving grades to them based on their internal assessment marks.

He took the decision at a high-level meeting attended by the Education Minister and senior officials.

The decision came two days after the government decided to postpone the exams, which were scheduled to begin on Monday.

A total of 5,34,903 students were to appear in the exams. Out of 11 papers for six subjects, exams were held in March for three papers pertaining to two subjects. At that time, the examinations were postponed due to the high court's orders.

The government had last month promoted all students of Classes 1 to 9 to the next class without conducting the exams.

According to the Chief Minister's Office, the government will also take a decision on the degree/post graduate courses examinations based on the situation that will prevail in future.

Monday's meeting discussed the methods adopted by other states and decided not to promote the students without conducting the exams.

The Telangana High Court on Saturday permitted the government to conduct the exams across the state except in Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) limits due to high incidence of Covid-19. It had asked the government to conduct the exams separately in GHMC at a later date.

Though the state government had informed the court that it is ready to conduct the exams across the state including GHMC, the court made it clear that the lives of students can't be risked for exams.

However, keeping in view the problems that may arise due to conduct of separate examinations, the government late Saturday decided to postpone the exams.

As per the schedule announced on May 22, the exams were to be held from June 8 to July 5.

The state government had filed a petition in the high court, seeking review of the interim orders passed by the court in March and the permission to conduct the exams in May as per the revised schedule.

On March 20, the high court had directed the state to postpone the Class 10 exams, scheduled for March 23 to April 6, in view of the Covid-19 outbreak.

The state had conducted the exams for three papers of the first and second languages before March 22 as per the original timetable.