Rajasthan Judicial Services: High Court Dismisses Plea Challenging Answer Key Of 2021 Prelims Exam

The exam was conducted on 28.11.2021 and the final result for the same was declared on 11.01.2022.

The present plea was filed by one Ashwini Chaturvedi. She had challenged the administration's decision on the correct choice in relation to question No.80 and its decision to delete question No.81, through which the petitioner missed out clearing the RJS preliminary examination's cut-off only by 1 mark.

A division bench of Justice Akil Kureshi and Justice Madan Gopal Vyas, observed,

"We do not think that the petitioner has made out any case for interference. As is well settled through series of judgments of the Supreme Court, interference by the High Court in specialized fields where recruitment is being made through specialized agencies, should be the minimum."

The court, while relying on Ran Vijay Singh and others v. State of Uttar Pradesh, observed that the correctness of the questions or answers, the role of the High Court in exercise of writ jurisdiction under Article 226 of the Constitution of India would be extremely limited. Unless it is pointed out that either the question or the answer is completely and clearly wrong, the High Court would not overrule a well considered decision of the expert body, added the court.

The court remarked that the examinations conducted by the recruiting agencies for appointment to public posts, more often than not, run into controversies with respect to the correctness of questions and answers.

The court further remarked that the State and UPSC are also not spared with these controversies. Often, there are multiple representations received from the examinees and even the recruiting agencies need to obtain expert opinion for which purpose expert committees are drawn, added the court.

In addition to this, the court observed that the correct questions are declared or in some cases, on account of some ambiguity, doubt or lack of certainty, the question is deleted altogether. The court added that however much it may desire, there is hardly any recruitment process that is completed without its share of controversies.

Notably, in Ran Vijay Singh, the Apex Court has made following observations on re-evaluation of answer keys, which was further reiterated in Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission, and another v.. Rahul Singh :

1)If a statute, Rule or Regulation governing an examination permits the re-evaluation of an answer sheet or scrutiny of an answer sheet as a matter of right, then the authority conducting the examination may permit it;

2)If a statute, Rule or Regulation governing an examination does not permit re-evaluation or scrutiny of an answer sheet (as distinct from prohibiting it) then the Court may permit re-evaluation or scrutiny only if it is demonstrated very clearly, without any "inferential process of reasoning or by a process of rationalisation" and only in rare or exceptional cases that a material error has been committed;

3)The Court should not at all re-evaluate or scrutinize the answer sheets of a candidate – it has no expertise in the matter and academic matters are best left to academics;

4)The Court should presume the correctness of the key answers and proceed on that assumption;

5)In the event of a doubt, the benefit should go to the examination authority rather than to the candidate.

The counsel for the petitioner submitted that the petitioner had given correct answers to both the questions. He argued that the administration, therefore, committed a serious error in declaring the petitioner's answer to question No.80 as incorrect and deleting the question No.81 altogether. He relied on certain booklets containing Hindi grammar, in support that the petitioner had given correct answers to above questions.