DOLI Vs. STATE OF U.P.

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This intra court appeal arises from a judgment and order of a Single Judge, dated 23.09.2020, in Writ-A No.7159 of 2020 by which though the writ petition of the appellant has been partly allowed but the prayer to allow correction in the entry relating to marks obtained by her in the Intermediate Examination filled in her form, submitted online, for Assistant Teacher Recruitment Examination, 2019, has been denied.

(2.) A glimpse at the facts giving rise to the appeal would be apposite. The State Government issued a notification to fill up 69,000 posts of Assistant Teacher in primary schools in various districts of the State. To that end, an Assistant Teacher Recruitment Examination, 2019 (for short ARTE, 2019) was proposed to be conducted by the Examination Regulatory Authority, Prayagraj (for short Authority). The appellant applied online with Registration No.130002862 and was assigned Roll No.12133720438. In the examination that followed, on 12.05.2020 the appellant was declared qualified. After declaration of result, U.P. Basic Shiksha Parishad (for short Parishad) invited online applications from successful candidates for counselling and appointment. The petitioner applied by feeding her registration number which reflected the data already filled by her earlier while getting registered for the ARTE, 2019. On such online submission, as per her merit, she was allotted district Shahjahanpur. Appellant's case is that when she discovered that in her online submission two entries were incorrect, namely, total marks of her graduation course, which were shown as 1300 in place of 1350, and marks obtained in Intermediate Examination, which were shown as 289 in place of 287 marks, she made representation to the Secretary, Authority and the Secretary, Parishad. When no action was taken on her representations, she filed Writ A No.7159 of 2020 before a Single Judge Bench of this Court, which was partly allowed by the impugned judgment and order to the extent correction was sought in the grand total of graduation marks.

(3.) Before the learned Single Judge a decision of the Apex Court in the case of Archana Chauhan versus State of UP & others (Civil appeal No.3068 of 2020, arising out of SLP (Civil) No.9541 of 2020, dated 2.9.2020) was cited by which the Apex Court allowed rectification of a mistake committed by a candidate, who had appeared in ARTE, 2019, in filling the total marks of all the papers of the Intermediate examination passed by the candidate. In that case, the candidate had secured certain marks against a total of 500 marks but, by mistake, this total was entered as 5000. The Apex Court upon finding that the erroneous entry of which correction was sought had been to the candidate's detriment, and that the candidate had not taken any advantage of that error, allowed rectification. The learned Single Judge following the judgment of the Apex Court allowed rectification to the extent prayed for in the total marks of the graduation course, that is the learned Single Judge allowed increase in the total marks of the graduation course from 1300 to 1350. But the learned Single Judge refused correction in the entry of marks alleged to have been obtained in the Intermediate Examination on the ground that the disclosed marks were higher than what the candidate actually obtained and, therefore, it had a bearing on the selection process. While rejecting that prayer, the learned Single Judge noticed clause 17 of the Government notification, which instructed the candidate to cross check the data fed from the testimonials, and to obtain a printout of that data, before uploading. Sub-clauses (5) and (6) of clause 17, specifically warned the candidate that after the data is uploaded, no correction/ alteration would be allowed under any circumstances.