MP High Court Recognised the Power of High Court to Order Re-Evaluation of Answer Sheets

The  Division Bench of the High Court of Madhya Pradesh (Bench at Indore) has laid down an important rationale while observing that "if the High Court has come to the conclusion that large number of questions have been wrongly evaluated and according to Model Answer Key, all the answers appear to be correct, then High Court has power under Article 226 of the Constitution to direct the respondent to re-evaluate the answer-sheets of the petitioner" while deciding a writ appeal being Chetan Patidar Minor Through his Father Bharatllal Patidar v. Board of Secondary Education, Madhya Pradesh.

 Our advocates for service matters in Indore shall discuss the issue here.

Facts

The Appellant/petitioner has appeared for Class XII examinations conducted by the respondent Board in 2023. When the result was announced, the appellant/petitioner was doubtful about his marks in the subject of English and Political Science. The appellant/petitioner applied for the retotalling but the Board on retotalling has not increased the marks of the appellant/petitioner and displayed the result of retotalling with a tip of ‘No Change’. The appellant/petitioner has applied for the answer sheets of English and Political Science and on receiving the same the appellant/petitioner was shocked to know that he was awarded with less marks in those subjects and some of the questions were wrongly declared to be wrong when actually they were correct as per the model answer scripts. The appellant/petitioner applied for re-evaluation through the principal of the concerned school. Representation of the appellant/petitioner for re-evaluation was not acted upon by the Respondent Board. Thereafter, the appellant/petitioner has preferred a Writ Petition before the Single Bench of the High Court of Madhya Pradesh. The main grounds raised by the petitioner/appellant in the Writ Petition is that there was negligence on the part of the checker, appointed by the board, who evaluated the answer sheets of the petitioner/appellant, marks awarded to student in higher secondary examination are very important for his career as the same is criteria for many entrance examinations for different universities and colleges and the same is used in ranking in different examinations and therefore, the respondent board and its valuers ought to have been more careful before publishing the result because mistake in declaring result could affect the career of the student and not awarding the marks to which appellant/petitioner is entitled in Political Science and English amounts to violation of Right to Equality and Right to Education. Meanwhile, the main defence of the respondent board was Rule 119 of The Board of Secondary Education (Madhya Pradesh) Regulations, 1965 which says that the re-evaluation of the answer sheet of any candidate is not allowed. 

Single Bench's Decision in Writ Petition

The Single Bench of the High Court considering the defence of the respondent Board and relying on the Apex Court’s judgement in Ran Vijay Singh v/s. The State of Uttar Pradesh and observed that Court should not re-evaluate or scrutinize the answer sheets of a candidate as the court has no expertise in the matter and academic matters are best left to academics. The Court should presume the correctness of the key answers and proceed on that assumption. It has further been held that in the event of a doubt, the benefit should go to the examination authority rather than to the candidate. However, only in exceptional circumstances, only in rare cases, where a material error has been committed, the Court should interfere. The Single Bench further observed that re-evaluation can be done only in Mathematics & Science subjects where the answers are based on fixed formulas and the error in valuation can be examined by the Court or by calling an expert on the subject. In objective types of questions especially in arts subjects, the Court room cannot be converted into an evaluation room. Observing as above, the Single Bench rejected the prayer of the petitioner/appellant for re-evaluation and dismissed his writ petition.

Division Bench's Judgement in Writ Appeal

Being aggrieved by the judgement of the learned Single Bench, the petitioner/appellant preferred the writ appeal before the Division Bench. The appeal was preferred on the ground that the respondent board is taking the advantage of rules framed by it to hide its mistakes. The Division Bench while allowing the appeal preferred by the appellant, set aside the judgement passed by the learned Single Bench and observed that although in the Regulations, there is no provision for re-evaluation, but on perusal of the answer key which was produced before the Court, if the Court has come to the conclusion that large number of questions have been wrongly evaluated and according to Model Answer Key, all the answers appear to be correct, then this Court has power under Article 226 of the Constitution to direct the respondent to re-evaluate the answer-sheets of the appellant/petitioner.

Analysis

The judgement has settled the position that despite the rules do not provide for re-evaluation, still, the High Court can order for re-evaluation of answer sheets. The principle laid down by the court has opened the doors for candidates who appear for exams conducted by either Education Boards, recruitment exams being conducted by the commissions, and other competitive exams wherein their answers are wrongly marked and the exam conducting authorities try to get away from their responsibilities of fair evaluation and hide their mistakes through regulations which do not provide for re-evaluations. The ongoing practice of exam conducting authority to merely rely on the rule to defend their stand will come to an end and the authorities shall be responsible for bringing their reply on merits. The long-term impact of the judgement would be accountability and fairness of the exam conducting authorities and more careful evaluation of the answer sheets of the candidates.

Note: The petitioner/appellant Chetan Patidar was represented by Advocate Harsh Kumar Patidar, Founder of Pitambara Law Chambers.