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Sujasha Mukherji v. The Hon'ble High Court of Calcutta, Thr. Registrar & Ors.

Civil Appeal · Neutral citation not assigned (Civil Appeal No. 2051 of 2015)Decided 19 Feb 2015
Civil Appeal No. 2051 of 2015
Justice Vikramajit Sen · Justice C. Nagappan

Background

The appellant stood second in the written examination for recruitment to the cadre of District Judge (Entry Level) in West Bengal, but after her Paper II marks were "moderated" down from 55% to 37%, she fell below the minimum qualifying marks and was disqualified from the interview stage, even though, without that moderation, she would actually have topped the written exam. She challenged the moderation process in the Calcutta High Court; a Single Judge ruled in her favour, but a Division Bench (whose author was, awkwardly, the senior-most of the three examiners who had conducted the disputed moderation) reversed that relief. She then appealed to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that the moderation exercise did not meet the standard laid down in its earlier ruling in Sanjay Singh v. U.P. Public Service Commission, because no Head Examiner had been appointed, no pre-marking meeting among examiners was held to standardize evaluation, and the junior-most of the three examiners, not a senior one, was tasked with moderating marks. The Court also flagged it as "alarmingly irregular" that the author of the High Court's Division Bench judgment was himself one of the examiners whose own moderation decision was under challenge, though it proceeded to decide the matter on merits given the urgency rather than remit it. Finding that what was actually done was a disguised re-assessment rather than genuine moderation, the Court set aside the High Court's Division Bench judgment, allowed the appeal, directed that only a 10-mark (mean) deduction be applied instead of 18, which kept the appellant in second position in the merit list, and ordered the High Court to interview her within one week.

Lesson Learnt

A decision-maker cannot sit in judgment over a dispute to which they were themselves a party (here, an examiner reviewing his own moderation): recusal is required; and "moderation" of exam marks must follow a fair, standardized process (a Head Examiner, pre-marking consensus meetings, proportionate adjustments) rather than functioning as an unexplained re-grading that can unfairly knock out a top-scoring candidate.

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

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