ANNIE T VARGHESE Vs. STATE OF KERALA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Common issues arise for consideration in these writ petitions which have been heard together and therefore they are being disposed of by a common judgment.

(2.) Petitioners appeared for the State Eligibility Test conducted in the year 2008. Ext. P2 is the prospectus issued in this behalf by the 4th respondent, the agency entrusted by the Government, to conduct the test. The main dispute relates to clause 13 of the prospectus. The same reads as follows.

(3.) There is no dispute that the petitioners obtained 35% in each one of these papers separately. Nor there is any contention by the petitioners that they have obtained more than 50% marks in each of the two papers. In either of the papers, the percentage of marks obtained by the petitioner is less than 50. But uniformly all of them contend that clause 13.2 of the prospectus should have been considered and implemented by the 4th respondent in such a manner that the average minimum namely 50% of papers I and II should have been computed by aggregating the marks separately obtained by them in papers 1 and II and then arriving at the percentage as such. Originally the maximum marks awarded for papers 1 and 2 was 100 and 120. In so far as paper I is concerned, two questions were deleted subsequently. Therefore, valuation was against a maximum of 98. Even for paper II the valuation was not uniformly against the maximum of 120 marks. In some cases valuation was against the maximum marks of 117 or 118 consequential to the deletion of two or three questions as the case may be. The grievance of the petitioners arose when the 4th respondent proceeded to draw up the percentage of each one of these candidates for papers I and II separately, adding the two percentages and then proceeding to determine the average. When this was done it so happened that though the marks obtained by the petitioners for the two papers were taken together aggregate and then reduced into a percentage fetched more than 50%. It gave rise to different result when the percentages of the two papers separately drawn up were added together and then divided by two. Apparently this occurred because of the denomination of marks in these papers; i.e. 98 in paper 1 or 117, 118 or 120 in paper II. Petitioners contend that the computation of marks for the purpose of clause 13 of the prospectus should have been done in such a manner that the marks obtained by the candidates individually should have first been aggregated and then the percentage of the same determined.