MCQ Exams- "Question Having No 'Most Appropriate Answer' Is Incapable Of Being Asked, Needs To Be Deleted": P&H High Court

The Bench of Chief Justice Ravi Shanker Jha and Justice Arun Palli further held that a suspect question in an MCQ based examination needs to be deleted so that no student gets advantage, or is denied advantage, because of evaluation of such questions.

"In an objective multiple-choice question, where the candidate has to merely mark a correct response, a question which has no single, unique or 'most appropriate answer' (i.e., suspect question) becomes incapable of being asked. This may be because the answer requires an explanation and argumentation or reasons for its justification, which is an exercise permissible for the exam where the format is subjective and not objective," the Court opined.

The case in brief

The Appellant/candidate, Lovepreet Singh wrote the Haryana Public Service Commission (HPSC) examination conducted to fill up the posts of Assistant Engineer (Civil) and (Mechanical) Class-II in Public Health Engineering Department, Haryana in the year 2015 [MCQ Format].

Before the formal declaration of result, the Appellant filed objections in respect to six questions asked in the said exam after the Commission uploaded the standard question booklet along with the proposed answer key.

Thereafter, the Commission declared the results and the appellant could not secure the requisite marks, and therefore, he failed to qualify for viva-voce/interview.

In light of this, he moved the High Court with his grievance that without consideration of the objections submitted by him and based upon the incorrect answer key, the Commission had declared the result.

In another plea, he prayed for quashing the report submitted by the Expert Committee recommending deletion of Q.Nos.25 & 62 (General Ability Paper) [these two questions were among the six questions objected to by the appellant]

He also prayed for a direction to the Commission to restore those questions and since the appellant had chosen the correct options, to award him the marks therefor.

However, the Single Judge dismissed the petition, and thus, challenging Singe Bench order, he moved before the Division bench by way of filing a letter patent appeal

Court's observations

At the outset, the Division Bench noted that in the earlier plea filed by the appellant, his grievance was that even though, he had filed specific objections to the proposed answer key but those were never examined by the Commission and, thus, based upon the wrong/incorrect answers the results were declared.

Whereas the Court further noted, the Commission in its written statement, filed in those proceedings, clarified that objections submitted by all the candidates, including the appellant, were sent to the Experts Committee who, upon considering each of those, submitted its report.

Accordingly, the Commission had submitted before the Court that based upon the said report, the answer key was revised, two questions were deleted and results were declared.

The Court noted that this particular stand was accepted by the appellant as he didn't pursue the matter further and instead filed another plea challenging the decision of the commission to delete two questions asked in the MCQ exam.

In light of this, the Court limited its decision to the following question:

If pursuant to the recommendations of the Expert Committee who found that question Nos.25 & 62 (General Ability Paper) were ambiguous/confusing, could those at all be deleted? And, whether the Commission was competent to cause such deletion.

To answer the query, the Court referred to Apex Court's ruling in the case of Kanpur University v. Samir Gupta, 1983(4) SCC 309 and Punjab and Haryana High Court's judgment in the case of Ankita Mittal v. State of Haryana and others, 2015(2) PLR 482 and held as follows:

"…the examining authority, guided by the experts in the subject, is well equipped and, thus, rightly authorized to decide the answer-key and in that process delete the suspect questions. Further, whether a question is framed aptly or is vague, ambiguous or has multiple correct answers and, therefore, required to be deleted is the exclusive domain of the subject experts. Thus, ordinarily this Court in exercise of power of judicial review would not interfere with the opinion of the experts unless shown to be conclusively erroneous or flawed."

In view of this, the dismissed the appeal filed by the appellant while noting that the authenticity or correctness of the report submitted by the expert committee or its decision to delete two questions was not questioned by the appellant in his plea.

Case title - Lovepreet Singh v. Haryana Public Service Commission and another
Case Citation: 2022 LiveLaw (P&H) 1

Click Here To Read/Download Order