New Delhi: The Supreme Court has set aside an Allahabad High Court order that had directed the Uttar Pradesh Subordinate Service Selection Commission to award an extra mark to a candidate over a disputed history question, holding that the Commission's chosen answer was not shown to suffer from any glaring or apparent error and that the High Court had exceeded its jurisdiction in interfering with it in review proceedings.
The Court was hearing a civil appeal by the Commission against a Division Bench order of the Allahabad High Court dated 20.03.2026, which, in a review petition, had reversed the dismissal of a candidate's challenge to the Commission's answer key for a recruitment examination for 3,133 posts of Village Development Officer, held in 2016.
The disputed question asked candidates to identify the incorrectly matched pair among 'Baburnama–Babur', 'Shahjahannama–Mohd. Tahir', 'Humayunnama–Humayun' and 'Tuzuk-e-Jahangiri–Jahangir'. The Commission's answer key selected option 'B' (Shahjahannama–Mohd. Tahir) as incorrect, while the respondent contended that option 'C' (Humayunnama–Humayun) was the correct answer, since the Humayunnama was in fact authored by Gulbadan Begum and not by Humayun himself.
The respondent's writ petition was initially dismissed by a Single Judge on the ground of laches, relying on the Supreme Court's decision in U.P. Public Service Commission v. Rahul Singh, which calls for judicial restraint in examination-answer disputes, and an intra-court appeal was also dismissed. However, a subsequent review petition was allowed by the Division Bench on the basis of an expert opinion dated 10.08.2020 not placed before the courts earlier which stated that option 'C' would be correct if pairing was done by authorship, but that option 'B' would be correct if pairing was done by subject-matter, since the Shahjahannama describes Shahjahan's reign and not Mohd. Tahir. Based on this, the High Court directed the Commission to award the extra mark and recommend the candidate for appointment.
Examining the scope of judicial review in such matters, the Supreme Court reiterated the principles laid down in Ran Vijay Singh v. State of U.P., that courts should presume the correctness of an examining body's key answers, should interfere only where a material error is demonstrated without recourse to any inferential process of reasoning, and that in case of doubt, the benefit must go to the examining authority rather than the candidate.
Applying these principles, the Court held that the expert report relied upon by the High Court was itself equivocal, since it did not declare option 'B' to be incorrect but merely observed that option 'C' would follow if pairing were done by authorship.
The Court observed that "neither the question concerned is incorrect nor option 'B' chosen by the Commission is incorrect... the Commission did not commit any such glaring or apparent mistake in picking up option 'B' as the correct answer." It further held that the question had to be understood as it stood, that authorship was not the only permissible basis for pairing, and that the respondent's submission that the question, being under the General Knowledge section, could only be paired by authorship, was based on assumption.
Finding that the High Court had clearly overstepped its jurisdiction in interfering with the Commission's answer key, particularly in the exercise of its review jurisdiction, the Supreme Court allowed the appeal, set aside the impugned order, and dismissed the respondent's writ petition, with all pending applications disposed of.
Case Title: Uttar Pradesh Subordinate Service Selection Commission vs. Ashok Yadav and Others, Civil Appeal arising out of SLP (C) No.12895/2026, 2026 INSC 991
