MANVENDRA SINGH Vs. STATE OF RAJASTHAN & ANR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The appellant has challenged the order of the Single Bench dated 09.02.2015 whereby the writ petition, preferred by the appellant challenging the action of the respondent Rajasthan Public Service Commission (hereinafter referred to as 'the RPSC') reducing the total marks for the subject i.e. Social Aspects of Engineering from 200 to 100 marks, was dismissed.

(2.) The petitioner (appellant herein) had applied for the post of Assistant Engineer (Civil, Electrical, Mechanical) conducted through Combined Competitive Examination-2013 in pursuance to advertisement dated 07.03.2013. The examination was of two parts namely, preliminary as well as main. The petitioner appeared in the main examination which comprised two compulsory subjects of Hindi and Social Aspect of Engineering, each carrying 100 marks, while the qualifying marks in each subject were 35%. In the advertisement issued by the RPSC, the paper for Social Aspect of Engineering was to be of 100 marks. However, when the examination took place the question paper was of 200 instead of 100 marks. However, after the paper had been conducted the RPSC realised the mistake and thereafter it issued a press note stating therein that due to irregularity the maximum marks in the paper of Social Aspect of Engineering were erroneously shown as 200 instead of 100 marks. It was further clarified that Part-A would be of 40 marks, Part-B of 30 marks and Part-C of 30 marks. It is the case of the appellant that when the said paper was of 200 marks, the distribution of marks of Part-A was shown to be 40, Part-B of 60 and Part-C of 100 marks, while in the corrigendum when the marks were reduced to 100, then the marks in three parts were not proportionately reduced and in case they had to be proportionately reduced they would have been 20 marks for Part-A, 30 marks for Part-B and 50 marks for Part-C. It is also submitted by the counsel for the appellant that the appellant had obtained 297 marks which were higher than the cut off marks for the general category but he could not qualify as he failed to secure minimum qualifying marks in the paper of Social Aspect of Engineering wherein he secured 31 out of 100 marks.

(3.) We have heard learned counsel for the parties and perused the record.