'Exercise Caution While Settling Question Papers For Judicial Exams' : Supreme Court To Rajasthan High Court

"Before parting we caution the High Court (Rajasthan) in future whenever examination of Civil Judges is conducted care and caution to be taken by the settler of the papers and also the answer keys so that the situation which has arisen in present years and which had occurred in earlier years do not occur and aspirants do not suffer."

A Bench comprising Justices M.R. Shah and B.V. Nagarathna noted every year there are some discrepancies in either the question paper itself or the answer keys in the examination conducted under the aegis of the High Court for recruitment of Civil Judges. Justice Shah reckoned -

"The High Court should have taken care and caution. What were they doing when the paper was settled? Every year this is a problem."

On 22.07.2021, under the Rajasthan Judicial Service Rules, 2010, advertisement was issued for direct recruitment to the posts of Civil Judge Cadre. After the Preliminary Examination was conducted model answer keys were published. Objections were sought in this regard. Several candidates objected on the grounds of the questions being vague, incorrect, misleading as well as the answer keys being incorrect. Thereafter, a Committee of Experts was constituted to examine the said objections. Upon consideration the Committee decided on deleting four questions and rejected the other objections. Writ Petition was filed before the Rajasthan High Court challenging the deletion and the rejection of other representations.

Advocate, Ms. Shobha Gupta appearing before the Bench submitted that the petitioner was short by 1 mark to meet the cut off in the Preliminary Examination.

"In the case of the petitioner, out of the 4 deleted questions, 3 questions were answered correctly. She had lost the cut off by one mark."

Justice Shah noted that the High Court had meticulously considered each and every question that was deleted. He was of the opinion that when an Expert Committee had taken a decision to delete four questions, then the Judges should exercise caution in interfering with the same.

He was not convinced that to address individual hardship, orders can be passed directing revaluation -

"For individual hardships there cannot be revaluation."

Ms Shobha beseeched the Court to only grant grace marks to the students who were losing out the opportunity to appear in the Main Examination by 1 or 2 marks.

Justice Shah rejected such indulgence stating, "Grace marks is a policy decision."

The Bench noted -

"…considering individual hardships, grace marks as prayed cannot be allowed."

The petitioners before the High Court had contended that for some of the questions, the English version was vague, but the Hindi version was not; some were correct, yet deleted; for some the question was correct, but the answer key was incorrect etc. Relying on the judgments of the Apex Court in Kanpur University, through Vice-Chancellor & Others v. Samir Gupta & Others, (1983) 4 SCC 309 and the Division Bench of the Rajasthan High Court in Arti Meena v. Rajasthan High Court, Jodhpur, the petitioner sought that grace marks be given to those who had correctly answered the deleted questions. Among other submissions, the respondents asserted that the deletion does not inter se affect the merit of the candidates as the merit list has been prepared strictly in accordance with the marks obtained by the candidates keeping in view the provisions in Rule 20 of the Rules of 2010. The High Court dismissed the Writ Petitions and because the petitioners had not succeeded in demonstrating in any of the cases that there was more than one correct answer out of multiple choice answers to any particular disputed question the Court refused to grant grace marks.

Considering that the High Court had extensively dealt with the issues, the Supreme Court  refused to interfere with its order -

"We see no reason to interfere with the order of the High Court. Petition dismissed."

However, to prevent such occurrence in future, it directed the High Court to take care and caution and asked the Supreme Court Registry to send a copy of the order to the Chief Justice of the High Court and the Chairman of Recruitment Committee.

"We direct the Registry to send a copy of this order to the Registrar General of the High Court who shall place it before the Chief Justice of the High Court of Rajasthan as well as the Chairman of Recruitment Committee so that such occurrence may not happen again in future and candidates are not put to difficulty.."

[Case Title: Koman Soni v. High Court of Rajasthan SLP (C)No. 8128 of 2022]

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