Punjab Civil Judge Exam: High Court Dismisses Plea Seeking Re-Checking Of Answer Sheets Before Viva Voce

Observing that "impartiality and sanctity of selection process" have to be maintained, the Punjab & Haryana High Court dismissed a plea seeking re-checking of answer sheets of Punjab Civil Judge mains examination before conducting viva voce.

The division bench of Justices Lisa Gill and Rita Tagore said,

"Answer sheets are kept and maintained in sealed iron trunks and in case, re-checking is to be permitted prior to the viva voce, there is likelihood of candidates alleging favourtism as well, therefore, requirement of maintenance of complete secrecy demands that uptill declaration of the final result, answer sheets are not opened."

Court added it did not find any justification for directing re-checking of the answer sheets and in any case, Recruitment Committee reserves its right to rectify any error found at any subsequent stage.

"If at an appropriate stage request for re-checking is made by any candidate, needful would be done and if it is found that candidate was in the zone of consideration, necessary steps would be taken. Therefore, in order to maintain purity, impartiality and sanctity of the selection process, we do not find any basis for directing respondent No. 3 to carry out the process of re-checking at the stage before conduct of viva voce even without disclosure of marks obtained by the candidates, as was later suggested by learned counsel for the petitioners," it held.

The Court considered two questions:

1. Whether the term ‘re-checking’ is synonymous with revaluation of answer sheets and not mere re-totalling of the marks obtained by the candidates.

2. When the exercise of re-checking of answer sheets should be carried out by the authorities i.e. after the main written examination and before viva-voce.

Answering the first the Court noted that Clause 11 of the recruitment advertisement starts with the declaration that ‘Re- evaluation of answer sheets is not allowed’ followed by the words that ‘Only rechecking of answer sheets on a written request from a candidate addressed to the Secretary, Punjab Public Service Commission, Patiala, can be allowed. "This in itself shows and makes it amply clear that revaluation of answer sheets is not permissible and provision is only for re-checking i.e. re- totalling of the marks in question," observed the bench.

The Court also rejected the contention of the petitioner that in view of Supreme Court judgments even if there be no insistence on revealing the marks of candidates, re-checking of the papers i.e. revaluation should be carried out at request of the candidate immediately after declaration of result of the main written examination and before conducting viva voce. 

The Court remarked, "we do not find any merit in this argument on deeper consideration. This is so for the reason that pristine sanctity of the selection process indeed has to be maintained in order to rule out any kind of bias."

Accordingly, the plea was dismissed.

Appearance: Animesh Sharma, Advocate for the petitioners.

Sandeep Jain, Addl.AG, Punjab.

Gaurav Chopra, Senior Advocate with Hemani Sarin, Advocate for respondent No. 3.