Hearing a petition filed by activist Vishnu Gawli, a bench, headed by Justice Abhay Oka, also directed the government to depute officers of the education department to all the centres to inspect whether generators and inverters have been provided.
Such teams have been asked to file a report by March 3 directly to the High Court and not to the government.
The HC was informed that during the HSC (higher secondary or class XII) examinations held recently, 18 exam centres were not provided with generators and inverters.
However, the HC observed the state had not obeyed its orders for providing generators to all the centres irrespective of whether the centres fall in load-shedding areas or not.
This amounted to contempt, said the judges and warned that if such a sutation is repeated in SSC examinations from March 3, then they would be forced to take contempt action against the government.
The HC had passed orders in July and September 2014 asking the state to provide generators and inverters in examination centres so that students were not put into inconvenience because of load shedding.
Recently, the government had filed an affidavit stating that the responsibility of providing generators and inverters was with the HSC and SSC Boards but the HC took the state to task by saying that it could not pass on the buck to others and that they were bound to fulfil their duty.
"It is the essential duty of the state to ensure that electricity is provided at the examination centres," the court had said.