BASIR AHMED Vs. PRATIVA MANDAL & ORS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The solitary question involved herein is whether a non party of the proceeding can prefer an appeal against the judgment when the findings are entirely to its benefit except that such benefit should be extended to all and the sundry, in other words, whether a non party can maintain an appeal only for the purpose of extending benefit of the decision rendered by the Single Bench without being prejudicially affected thereby.

(2.) Before adverting to the said issue, the salient facts of the instant case are required to be adumbrated as under:-

(3.) A flurry of writ petitions were launched by various aspiring candidates challenging certain questions to have been wrongly translated in Bengali language and wrong answers were given in the answer key in the Teacher Eligibility Test (T.E.T), 2014 held on 11th October, 2015. The multiple choice questions were required to be answered by the aspiring candidates in OMR sheet to be darkened by the candidates for smooth, speedy and transparent evaluation of the answers by use of technology. The question paper which was originally framed in the English language was also translated in Bengali and other languages but we are primarily concerned with the Bengali translation of the English and the answer key subsequently published by the recruiting agencies. An information was furnished by the recruiting agencies on an application made under Right to Information Act, 2005 and the question paper, OMR sheet and answer key were also provided to the applicants. It was detected that certain questions in Section-I, Language I, Bengali subject and child development and pedagogy sections were incorrectly answered and some of the questions were found to have been wrongly translated in bengali language; the opinion was sought from a renowned scholar of the bengali literature as well as the relevant subject, who opined that the answer to those questions as disclosed in the answer key were incorrect. The aforesaid opinion emboldened various aspiring candidates to approach the Court by filing the writ petition not only for ascertainment by the external experts on those multiple choice O.M.R type tests and wrong key answers supplied by the paper setters, but also for re-assessment and or revaluation of the O.M.R sheets pertaining to those wrong questions as well as answers thereto.