In a significant ruling aimed at upholding fairness in competitive examinations, the Uttarakhand High Court has mandated a re-evaluation of the Uttarakhand Judicial Services Civil Judge (Junior Division) Examination, 2023. The court found errors in three questions of the preliminary paper and has ordered the Uttarakhand Public Service Commission (UKPSC) to correct these mistakes, recompute all results, and issue a revised merit list.
Court Directs Specific Corrections to Question Paper
A division bench comprising Justices Ravindra Maithani and Alok Mahra delivered the judgment, providing clear instructions to the examining body. The bench directed the deletion of question number 158 from Set A of the preliminary examination paper. Furthermore, the court ruled that for question number 145, option (c) should be treated as the correct answer, and for question number 120, option (d) should be considered correct.
The High Court instructed the UKPSC to undertake a complete re-evaluation of all answer sheets based on these corrections. The commission must then publish a revised merit list in strict accordance with the UKPSC Regulations of 2022.
Petition Exposed Errors in Key Legal Questions
The court's intervention came in response to a petition filed by a candidate, Suryansh Tiwari. Tiwari had challenged the accuracy of multiple questions in the Series A question booklet, bringing specific legal arguments against three of them.
The disputed questions covered crucial areas of law:
- Question 120 tested knowledge on the essential conditions for a valid waqf under Muslim Law.
- Question 145 dealt with determining the correct offence when a person enters a house by creating an aperture in the wall.
- Question 158 asked candidates to identify the leading case law pertaining to the admissibility of electronic evidence in Indian courts.
After hearing detailed arguments, the court found substantial merit in the petitioner's objections. It concluded that the identified errors needed rectification to ensure a just and equitable selection process for all aspirants.
Commission Concedes Errors, Supreme Court Principle Applied
During the proceedings, the counsel representing the UKPSC acknowledged the mistakes. Relying on expert opinion, the commission admitted that the answer it had initially provided for question 120 was incorrect and that the petitioner's objection was valid.
Regarding question 158, the respondent's counsel conceded that since the question admitted two correct answers, it should have been deleted during the evaluation itself. This aligns with established principles for competitive exams and settled legal doctrine that no candidate should suffer due to an error or ambiguity originating from the examining authority.
The High Court bench relied on a Supreme Court precedent which states that when a key answer is demonstrably erroneous or a question has more than one correct answer, the court may order such questions to be excluded from evaluation. The marks are then proportionately adjusted for the remaining questions.
The court specifically referenced the UKPSC Regulations, 2022, which state that structurally defective questions shall be excluded, and the marks for the rest of the paper shall be increased proportionally to keep the total maximum marks unchanged.
The result for the Uttarakhand Judicial Services Civil Judge (Junior Division) Examination, 2023, was originally declared on October 31. UKPSC Secretary Ashok Kumar Pandey attended the court proceedings via video conference.
