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Reetesh Kumar Singh & Ors. v. The State of Uttar Pradesh & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2025 INSC 1031Decided 12 Aug 2025
Miscellaneous Application No. 1306 of 2025 in Civil Appeal No. 12069 of 2024 (with connected MAs)
Chief Justice B.R. Gavai · Justice K. Vinod Chandran · Justice N.V. Anjaria

Background

This case arises from a long-running dispute over the 2021-22 Uttar Pradesh Subordinate Service Selection Commission examination for the post of Revenue Lekhpal. The Supreme Court had earlier ordered that a disputed answer (Question No. 88, Booklet Series 'F') be treated as correct and directed the Commission to re-evaluate results, later expanding the re-evaluation to four more questions by order dated 24.04.2025, but only for applicants whose objections were already pending before the Court as of that date. Several groups of candidates then filed miscellaneous applications (MAs) claiming their earlier-filed interlocutory applications had been wrongly excluded from consideration due to a registry error, and thus they were unfairly left out of the 24.04.2025 re-evaluation benefit.

Decision Breakdown

The Court examined the registry's office report and each pending IA individually. Where objections had been filed only after the Court's 19.02.2024 cut-off order (21.11.2023), those MAs were dismissed as time-barred. Where the Office Report confirmed that an IA was genuinely filed and pending as of 24.04.2025 but had been left out only due to registry inadvertence (not the applicant's fault), the Court restored those IAs and extended the benefit of the 24.04.2025 re-evaluation order to them. A separate group seeking "grace marks" after losing one mark on re-evaluation of Question 88 was dismissed, since the Court had already conclusively determined the correct answer and ordered re-evaluation on that basis, leaving no room for compensatory grace marks.

Lesson Learnt

In multi-party litigation involving large recruitment batches, whether a claim gets the benefit of a court's order can hinge on procedural facts like exact filing dates and registry record-keeping: genuine administrative lapses by the court registry can be corrected, but delay by a litigant themselves generally cannot be excused after a firm cut-off has been set.

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

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