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High Court of Tripura Through the Registrar General v. Tirtha Sarathi Mukherjee & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2019 INSC 155Decided 6 Feb 2019
Civil Appeal No. 1264 of 2019
Justice Ashok Bhushan · Justice K.M. Joseph

Background

Respondent No.1 sat the 2011 Tripura Judicial Service (Grade-I) recruitment examination but was declared "not qualified" in the main written exam, falling five marks short of the cut-off needed for an interview. After inspecting his answer scripts under the RTI Act, he claimed some correct answers had been wrongly marked incorrect, and his writ petition and a subsequent Special Leave Petition seeking re-evaluation were both dismissed. He then filed a review petition, which the Gauhati High Court allowed, directing re-evaluation of his papers: a decision the Tripura High Court (through its Registrar General, representing the examining body) challenged before the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court examined the specific disputed answers itself and found that, even assuming some merit in the candidate's complaints about individual questions, he had no statutory or rule-based right to re-evaluation under the governing 2003 Rules, and the examining body's assessment on subjective, non-objective-type questions could not simply be second-guessed by the Court. The Court also noted an internal inconsistency in the High Court's review order: it had reasoned the original complaint concerned only one paper, yet directed re-evaluation of other papers as well. Because there was no right to revaluation and the High Court's reasoning on its own terms was flawed, the Supreme Court allowed the appeal, set aside the High Court's review order, and dismissed the respondent's review petition, with no order as to costs.

Lesson Learnt

Candidates in a competitive examination cannot claim re-evaluation of answer scripts as of right unless the governing rules specifically provide for it: courts will defer to the examining body's assessment, especially on subjective questions, rather than substitute their own view of what mark should have been awarded.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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