A Single bench of Chhattisgarh High Court dismissed several petitions which were challenging the Entry level Civil Judge Examinations of 2020 conducted by the State Public Service Commission.
Justice P. Sam Koshy this Thursday (March 18, 2021) delivered his decision on Prafull Kumar Tiwari v. State of Chhattisgarh & Ors. (and connected petitions). He held that just the mere cancellation of 9 questions from the exam answer key could not be the reason to question the intentions of the exam and no students interests can be held to be affected.
He added that the deletion of some questions does not mean the whole exam is vitiated.
Reference was made to a similar case of Chhattisgarh Professional Examination Board v. Vikram Singh Rana & Ors where it was held that,
“By virtue of the deletion of 18 questions, which were found as not correct or sustainable because of ambiguity or due to availability of more answers or having been framed wrongly without giving proper answer, the marks available in respect of such 18 questions (one mark each) have been re-distributed to the remaining 132 questions (out of total of 150) as per the formula stipulated in this regard. All the candidates, who participated in the Examination, are either 'beneficiary' or 'not a loser' in any manner and hence there cannot be any valid or sustainable grievance or cause of action for the writ petitioners”
With the case at hand, the exam answers were published by the Chhattisgarh Public Service Commission and when the final amended answers were published CGPSC deleted 9 questions and the answer to one question was amended.
The judge commented, “the writ petitioners cannot contend or insist that the question paper should carry a minimum of 150 questions always. No provision of law or precedent is brought to the notice of this Court that, if the multiple choice questions get reduced (from 150 to 132 in the instance case, with equitable distribution of marks to all the candidates in respect of remaining questions), it will vitiate the exercise”
The Court observed, “this Court does not find any substantial hamper and prejudice occurring in the course of attending the examination by the candidates on the procedural front. Another reason for the contentions raised by Petitioners deserving rejection is the fact that from a large section of many thousands candidates who had appeared, the grievance has been raised only by these 52 Petitioners and of which also except for one Petitioner, not a single candidate had raised objection immediately after the examination was conducted so far as the deviation of the procedural part is concerned.”
Further the court held, “the findings so arrived at by the Committee was based on sufficient reasonings and the same cannot be in any manner held to be either arbitrary or contrary to law. Since the Expert Committee has given its report after due consideration of the subject matter and based on cogent materials available with them, therefore, merely because another view was possible or another view could had been taken does not mean that the report of the Expert Committee is without any basis or contrary to law.”
