The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) declared a 77.80 percent success rate at the national level while in Delhi the pass percentage was 77.61 in the Class 12 exams held in March-April.

But Delhi's Urdu medium schools had a poor showing - a pass percentage of 32 percent in Class 12 compared to the 84.90 percent result of English and Hindi medium schools combined.

In Class 10, the results stood at 25 percent. New Delhi has 10 Urdu medium schools.

According to Firoz Bakht Ahmed, chairman of the Friends for Education - a group compiling these results for the last two decades - the cumulative performance for most Urdu schools has been fluctuating between 25 and 35 percent for the last five years.

Only four of 70 girls (six percent) passed from Zeenat Mahal Girl's Senior Secondary School at Lal Kuan in Old Delhi in the Class 10 exams. The figure was equally abysmal for Class 12 - just 7.5 percent.

The school has nearly 150 students but only four teachers.

"It is a system woefully gone wrong and no one is paying attention even though the results are for everyone to see," Ahmed told IANS.

At the Anglo-Arabic Boys' Senior Secondary School at Ajmeri Gate, central Delhi, only 24 percent passed in Class 10 and 51 percent in Class 12.

Shafiq Memorial School at Bara Hindu Rao in Old Delhi was no better with just 33 percent students passing in Class 12. Chandni Chowk's Fatehpuri Muslim School had 34 as pass percentage in Class 10 and around 55 percent in Class 12.

According to Ahmed, the students attend classes in extremely difficult conditions - dimly lit rooms, dilapidated buildings, choked or stinking toilets, moth-eaten furniture, unsafe drinking water and missing teachers.

"There's no easy solution. Only a meticulously planned collective effort can lift the schools from the current morass," he says.

Akhlaq Ahmed, whose son failed in Class 10 from the Fatehpuri Muslim School, accuses the institution's management, principal and teachers of being lackadaisical and unconcerned.

According to Shahid Siddiqui, editor of Urdu weekly Nai Duniya: "Some anti-Urdu political hawks have slotted Urdu as a Muslim language. It's a fallacy as Urdu is a language of composite culture.

"Though the language was created in the army ranks of the Mughals, Urdu means lashkar - a conglomeration of people from various backgrounds. As Hindi today is a bridge between Hindus and Hindi-knowing Muslims, the same was the case between the Urdu-knowing Hindus and Muslims."

Akhtar-uz-Zaman, principal of Anglo Arabic School, complains that positions for 15 teachers are vacant.

Khalid Nazir, principal of Fatehpuri School, too claims to have 10 vacancies in his institution.

Also, the textbooks of almost all the subjects are not available in Urdu medium.