ASHUTOSH KUMAR JHA Vs. STATE OF BIHAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Should a High Court, exercising power of judicial review under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, enter into the correctness of decision of experts in relation to framing of questions and preparation of Model Key Answers of competitive multiple choice objective type test, is one of the seminal issues involved in the present batch of appeals. The issue has acquired substantial significance in the present scenario, where majority of competitive examinations for employment in public service or for admission to various educational institutions involve screening through multiple choice objective type test questioning the wisdom of experts, candidates after having been made unsuccessful approach the superior Courts, normally, raising grievance that had their answer sheets been duly evaluated on the basis of answer, which, according to them, were correct, they would have been declared successful. The present batch of appeals involves the same question to be dealt with by this Court.

(2.) All these appeals, filed under Clause 10 of the Letters Patent of this Court, arise out of common judgment and order, dated 05.05.2016, passed by a learned single Judge in a batch of writ applications, made under Article 226 of the Constitution of India by the appellants, whereby their writ applications, made under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, have been dismissed.

(3.) The dispute relates to result of preliminary test held in the light of an advertisement issued by the Bihar Public Service Commission (hereinafter referred to as "the Commission"), called "56th to 59th Joint Combined (Preliminary) Competitive Examination, 2014". Only those candidates, who could clear the preliminary test, were to be allowed to participate in the Mains Examination. The appellants could not qualify for the Mains Examination, on the basis of their performance in the preliminary test, so held, the result whereof was published on 21.11.2015. The appellants challenged the result by filing writ applications, under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, mainly on the ground of erroneous deletion of certain questions of preliminary test from the purview of evaluation, based on the opinion of a body of experts, constituted by the Commission, since such questions were found by the Experts Body to have been wrongly framed. We will be referring to the facts of the case in subsequent paragraphs, in detail.