KRISHNA KUMAR ROY Vs. STATE OF U P

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Combined Pre-Medi- cal Test (for short, C. P. M. T.) is held every year in accordance with the orders of the State Government issued under Section 28 (5) of the U. P. State Universities Act, 1973. This test is conducted by one of the State Universities, and admissions to all the State Medical Colleges and the King George Medical College, Lucknow, are made out of the candidates obtaining the highest position in this test subject to various reservations. We are not concerned in this case with reservations.

(2.) The petitioner was one of the general candidates. Four papers are set for the test, each containing 100 questions, each carrying three marks. Thus the maximum marks of all the papers come to 1200. The petitioner secured 875 marks at the last C. P. M. T. All the general candidates who had secured up to 881 marks and some of those who had secured 880 marks have been able to secure admission. Two of the candidates who obtained 880 marks and others who secured less marks are still in the waiting list. The petitioner's contention is that if the proper marking had been done then he would have secured more marks than 880.

(3.) After the C. P. M. T. was held, correct answers were published as per a 'key', An-nexure 2 to the writ petition. Against question No. 17 of Chemistry and question No. 45 of Physics paper it was mentioned that "due to some printing errors all the candidates have been given full marks in these two questions". The petitioner's contention is that he had answered these questions correctly and it was wrong on the part of the examiners to have given full marks even to the candidates who had not answered these questions correctly. It was conceded before us that the printing error consisted of discrepancies between the English and Hindi versions in the questions. Each paper is a multiple-choice objective style paper. In other words, against each question four alternative answeres, marked 1, 2, 3 and 4 respectively are indicated, and the candidate is expected to note the serial number of the correct alternative in the answer sheet. What happened in regard to these questions was that the serial numbers of the alternatives given in the English version in the left-hand column did not tally with the serial numbers of the same alternatives in the Hindi version given in the right hand column. Such being the situation, the examiners rightly took the view that it could not be ascertained as to which candidate had answered the question correctly. The petitioner cannot prove that he had answered the question correctly as one has no means to find out whether he was guided by the English version or by the Hindi version, nor could he prove that any other candidate had answered the question incorrectly. Thus the objection raised on this core was obviously untenable.