SC: Courts can’t order revaluation
In an important jugement on the “secrecy” of competitive exams held by the statutory bodies such as UPSC and the state public service commissions for the appointment in government jobs, the Supreme Court has held that courts have no power to order revaluation of answer sheets of candidates appearing in such competitions.
“The issue of re-evaluation of answer book is no more res-integra (a point not governed by any rule of law and be decided on principle). The law on the subject emerges is that in absence of any provision under the statute or statutory rules and regulations, the courts should not generally direct revaluation,” a bench of Justices B.S. Chauhan and Swatanter Kuamr held.
Virtually putting a bar on the high courts ordering revaluation, the bench said “we are of the considered opinion that such a course was not permissible to the high court. The settled legal proposition is that the court cannot take upon itself the task of the statutory authorities.”
The judgement came on the appeal of Himachal Pradesh Public Service Commission (HPSC), challenging the state high court direction for re-evaluating the “civil law-II” paper of a candidate, Mukesh Thakur in the 2005 state judicial services exams.
Mr Thakur, up in the overall merit list of written exams of five papers, was not called for interview as he did not secure the “mandatory” minimum 45 per cent marks in the “civil law-II” paper.
He had secured 89 out of 200 in it, which fell short by one mark to meet the mandatory requirement of 90 marks.
On revaluation done by a professor of HP University law faculty in 2005 before the matter came to the apex court, Mr Thakur was given 119 marks.
To test the reason for the wide gap between the two evaluations, when the apex court ordered another evaluation by the law faculty of the Delhi University, his marks were drastically reduced to 82. The main challenge of Thakur’s counsel L N Rao was that two questions of the “civil law-II” paper were inconsistent.
But the top court did not consider it a valid ground to order revaluation and agreed with the stand of HPSC counsel Anil Nag that if there was any inconsistency in framing of the questions, it would have same implication for all candidates.
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