PREM KUMAR BHAKTA Vs. STATE OF BIHAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Under order dated 15th July 2013 made by the learned single Judge this group of writ petitions filed under Article 226 of the Constitution are referred to the Division bench and are notified before us.

(2.) The writ petitioners in each writ petition are the aspirants for selection and appointment to various cadres (19 in number) in class II service under the State of Bihar. The petitioners have challenged the result of the 53rd to 55th Combined (Mains) Competitive Examination, 2011 (hereinafter referred to as "the Competitive Examination, 2011") given by the Bihar Public Service Commission in the months of May-June 2012. The challenge is to the method of evaluation of the answer sheets and the marks given to each examinee.

(3.) According to the writ petitioners, the State of Bihar is required to make appointment to the various cadres in the State service by appointment of the persons recommended by the Bihar Public Service Commission (hereinafter referred to as "the Commission"). Although, the recruitment is made for various cadres in the State service, the Commission holds a common selection process known as Combined Competitive Examination for appointment to the cadres where the minimum qualification required for appointment is a graduate degree. The very nature of the examination offers a variety of subjects for examination. Some subjects are common to all while for other subjects the options are offered to the applicants amongst wide variety of optional subjects. Some subjects like Maths are scoring subjects while some subjects like languages are not that scoring. Thus, the examinees who opt for scoring subjects easily steal a march over the other examinees. Further, several lakh persons make attempt at the said examination. Their answer papers are sent to the examiners who do not have the same standard of examining the answer-sheets. Thus, anomaly in the results arises. Some examiners may be liberal in giving marks whereas other may not be that liberal. The result is thus skewed up on account of the aforesaid anomalies. With a view to removing such anomalies arising from fortuitous circumstances of selecting a particular optional subject and of answer sheets being examined by a particular examiner, the examining bodies like universities and Public Service Commissions have evolved a system of scaling down or moderation to bring the parity in the results. Both these methods are accepted and adopted by the universities worldwide. Having regard to the nature of examination and the variety of the optional subjects, the Commission also is required to moderate or scale down the results. In the present case, the Commission has failed to take necessary exercise to bring about a fair result. The petitioners, therefore, have challenged the result of the Competitive Examination 2011 and have prayed for a direction to prepare the results afresh after scaling down the results.