The Orissa High Court has ordered the revaluation of two answers provided by a candidate who took the examination for direct appointment into the District Judge cadre from the Bar.
A Division Bench of Chief Justice Dr. S. Muralidhar and Justice Radha Krishna Pattanaik held that the broad power under Article 226 may continue to be available even if there is no provision for revaluation in a situation where a candidate is treated as having given the wrong answer despite having given the correct answer about which there can be no reasonable doubt, and thus the candidate is found disentitled to any marks.
Mr. Amitav Tripathy, the petitioner in this case, took the High Court of Orissa’s examination for direct recruitment into the District Judge cadre from the Bar for the year 2016-17. When the written examination results were announced, the petitioner did not see his name on the list.
He requested xerox copies of his answer sheets under the RTI Act because he was displeased with the outcome.He received 53 out of 100 points in Paper I and 43.5 out of 100 points in Paper II, according to his answer sheets. He discovered that he had received 45.5 out of a possible total of 43.5 when he calculated his marks from Paper-II.
It should be emphasised that in order to qualify for the interview, candidates needed to score at least 45 percent on each paper and a minimum of 50 percent overall. As a result, the petitioner was not chosen for an interview.
The Examination Committee filed an affidavit on May 4, 2022, stating that after verifying the marks awarded by the examiner in the abovementioned answer script with the accompanying mark sheet, it was discovered that there was a mistake in totaling the marks. In the petitioner’s paper-II, the overall score is 45.5 instead of 43.5.
In a rare and unique case, the High Court found that the Court’s jurisdiction to compel revaluation is not compromised when exercising its powers under Article 226 of the Constitution.
The Court reviewed the petitioner’s replies to Group-D questions 1 and 3, for which he received 0.5 marks each.
The explanation for the above mentioned marks is because “on their face looks to be obscure and not elaborative enough bearing in view the marks assigned to the relevant question,” according to the rebuttal affidavit.
The High Court observed that according to the given situation, the marks of the petitioner must be revaluated by a law expert.
“The court directs the Registrar to send the original answer script of the petitioner to any law expert as may be chosen by the examination committee, in a sealed cover and only the answers to questions 1 and 3 of Group-D be asked to be revalued and the result of such revaluation be placed before this court on the next date.”
The court said that it would like to “clarify that it considered this to be a rare and exceptional case and further clarifies that this order should not be construed as a precedent since every case of this kind would turn on its peculiar facts and circumstances”.
The case has been put up for further hearing on 18th May.