Orissa High Court: A Division Bench of Sanju Panda and S.K Panigrahi JJ., sets aside the impugned judgment and held that it is the duty of the recruitment agency to adopt a zero-tolerance approach to pre-empt any doubts or confusion with respect to the question posed to evaluate a candidate.
The present appeal has been filed due to being aggrieved by an impugned order dated 03-12-2019 of Single Judge Bench which directed the respondents i.e. State Selection Board (SSB) in the impugned order to conduct fresh examinations for the post of Lecturer and cancel the previous results on account of various defaults being found in the result and merit list due to discrepancies in the questions asked in the question paper in the subject History, along with the release of wrong answer key and allotting marks finally in accordance with Expert Committee Recommendations. The students registered their protest with respect to the entire selection process being unprofessional and filed a petition seeking relief, pursuant to which the impugned order was passed which stands challenged before this Court.
It was observed by the Single Judge in the impugned order that when the candidates are facing negative marks with various counts and a large chunk of questions are defective, it would be equitable if the fresh written examination would be conducted in subject History only as opposed to awarding marks in all 23 questions to all the candidates, ignoring the objections made in various counts, a re-examination will be in the interest of justice, equity and fair play.
Counsel for the State submitted that Single Judge has erred in not appreciating the fact that the merit of the successful candidates has been compromised by setting aside the entire examination.
Counsel for the respondents submitted that high degree of probity and fairness has been maintained while revising the Answer Keys to protect the interests of all the candidates, for the subject of History. The SSB, it is stated, adopted the Principle of Uniformity in awarding full marks to all the candidates who appeared in the Written Examination including the appellants.
The Court further relied on the ratio laid down in judgments West Bengal Council of Higher Education v. Ayan Das, (2007) 8 SCC 242 and UGC v. Neha Anil Bobde (2013) 10 SCC 519 which held
“29. We are of the view that, in academic matters, unless there is a clear violation of statutory provisions, the Regulations or the Notification issued, the Courts shall keep their hands off since those issues fall within the domain of the experts.”
“…. the Court shall not generally sit in appeal over the opinion expressed by expert academic bodies and normally it is wise and safe for the Courts to leave the decision of academic experts who are more familiar with the problem they face, than the Courts generally are.”
The Court further relied on President, Board of Secondary Education v. D. सुवणकर, (2007) 1 SCC 603 and held that
“The court should be extremely reluctant to substitute its own views as to what is wise, prudent and proper in relation to academic matters in preference to those formulated by professional men possessing technical expertise and rich experience of actual day-to-day working of educational institutions and the departments controlling them. It would be wholly wrong for the court to make a pedantic and purely idealistic approach to the problems of this nature, isolated from the actual realities and grass root problems involved in the working of the system and unmindful of the consequences which would emanate if a purely idealistic view as opposed to pragmatic one was to be propounded.”
Justice Panigrahi quoted ‘Albert Einstein’
“If I had an hour to solve a problem, and my life
depended on the solution, I would spend the first
55 minutes determining the proper question to
ask… for once I know the proper question, I could
solve the problem in less than five minutes.”
It held that in view of the observations above, the re-examination is an unnecessary exercise that will cause major inconvenience to all applicants without much gain. It was further held that sufficient steps have been taken to alleviate the concerns of the applicants based on the advice by experts in the field.
In view of the above, impugned order set aside.[Sasmita Pattnaik v. State of Odisha, 2020 SCC OnLine Ori 728, decided on 14-10-2020]
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