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The bench of Justice C. Hari Shankar and Justice Sudhir Kumar Jain made these observations in an appeal filed by the Staff Selection Commission (SSC) challenging the order of the Single Judge Bench wherein a candidate’s petition challenging the answer key to 7 questions was partly accepted.
The Delhi High Court, recently, held that “any judge who, perceiving obvious injustice taking place before him, professes inability to interfere, breaches his solemn oath of office”. These observations were made in an appeal filed by the SSC challenging the order of a single judge.
One Candidate had approached the single bench contesting the accuracy of answers in the final Answer Key released by the SSC, specifically challenging the answers for seven questions.
Advocate Ankur Chhibber, representing the candidates, argued that correcting the alleged errors would grant them an additional 21 marks, significantly affecting their CGLE results. However, the single judge bench accepted their contentions regarding one question and rejected the arguements for rest 6 answers.
The court addressed a preliminary objection raised by Standing Counsel Pratima N. Lakra for SSC, who argued that courts should not interfere with answers in examination answer keys, as these fall within the academic domain. While courts typically defer to subject experts, judicial review is not entirely precluded.
“If the Court is satisfied that the answer provided in the impugned answer key is obviously incorrect, so that allowing the answer to remain would result in injustice, the Court has necessarily to step in and set aright the situation”, the court outlined.
The court outlined principles regarding challenges to answer keys: deference to expert opinions is the norm, but courts may intervene in rare and exceptional cases where an answer is demonstrably wrong. Vague questions should be considered for deletion, and revaluation based on corrected keys is preferred over re-examinations.
In this case, the court noted that the word "OKEY" was not a meaningful English word, thus determining the correct answer to be "One" for Question ID 264330171997, where only "YOKE" was valid. The court noted that "OKEY" was either an abbreviation or used informally, not qualifying as meaningful English.
Consequently, the court disposed of the petition.
Case Title: Staff Selection Commission v Shubham Pal (2024:DHC:7901-DB)
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