We are Class X students from across India who appeared for the CBSE Mathematics Board Examination 2026. Many of us faced a paper that was lengthy, reasoning-heavy, and time-intensive, with multi-step questions, a case study, and proof-based questions requiring extended conceptual application.

While we appreciate CBSE’s approach of testing understanding over rote memorization, a key issue has emerged: regional variation in question difficulty.

Preliminary discussions among students nationwide reveal that:

• Some regions received questions that were more direct and NCERT-aligned, allowing faster completion.
• Other regions, including ours, received papers that were time-intensive and reasoning-heavy, questions were way harder than the other sets of different regions.
• In some cases, even papers labeled as Mathematics basic were harder than the standard set, creating unintended inequity.
  
  
  For a centralized board, the fundamental principle is that all students across India should face equally challenging papers, regardless of region. Differences in difficulty undermine this principle and can affect fair assessment.

We respectfully request CBSE to:

1. Conduct a statistical review of inter-set difficulty and marks distribution across all regions.
2. Apply normalization or moderation if deviations are found, so that no student is disadvantaged due to higher difficulty in their set.
3. Ensure that future papers maintain truly uniform difficulty and cognitive load nationwide, so that all students are assessed fairly.
   
   
   We raise this concern not to question CBSE’s academic standards, but to support equitable evaluation for every student across India. Students across regions deserve a level playing field, where effort, understanding, and preparation—not accidental regional differences—determine performance.