P&H HC dismisses appeal against HPSC, says in MCQ Exam, question which has no unique or ‘most appropriate answer’ becomes incapable of being asked & needs to be deleted

Read Order: Lovepreet Singh v. Haryana Public Service Commission and Another

Monika Rahar

Chandigarh, January 7, 2022: While dealing with an appeal by a candidate against not being marked for two correct answers given against deleted questions, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has held that in an objective MCQ exam where the candidate has to merely mark a correct response, a question which has no single, unique or ‘most appropriate answer’ (i.e. suspect question) becomes incapable of being asked. A suspect question, thus, needs to be deleted so that no student gets advantage, or is denied advantage, because of evaluation of such questions.

The Bench of Justices Ravi Shanker Jha and Justice Arun Palli also said ,“Similarly, the examining authority, guided by the experts in the subject, is well equipped and, thus, rightly authorized to decide the answer-key and in that process delete the suspect questions. Further, whether a question is framed aptly or is vague, ambiguous or has multiple correct answers and, therefore, required to be deleted is the exclusive domain of the subject experts. Thus, ordinarily this Court in exercise of power of judicial review would not interfere with the opinion of the experts unless shown to be conclusively erroneous or flawed.”

In this case, the appellant appeared for a competitive exam conducted by the Haryana Public Service Commission (Commission). Before the formal declaration of result, the Commission uploaded the standard question booklet along with the proposed answer key. The appellant filed objections to six questions from the answer key. Thereafter, the Commission declared the result and the appellant failed to qualify for an interview. The grievance of the appellant was that the result was declared based upon the incorrect answer key and without considering his objections.

Thus, he approached the High Court with a Writ Petition. The Commission refuted the appellant’s claim and stated that it declared the result based on the report of experts to whom these objections were sent. This petition was dismissed by the Single Judge bench. 

Then, another petition was filed by the petitioner praying for the quashing of the Expert Committee’s report which recommended deletion of Q. Nos. 25 & 62 (General Ability Paper) and for restoration of those questions because the appellant answered these questions correctly. However, the Single Judge dismissed this petition on the ground that the selection process had already withstood the judicial scrutiny in the previous round of litigation and therefore, the second petition was hit by res judicata. Hence this intra Court appeal was filed.

The appellant’s counsel submitted that even though the Expert Committee found Q. Nos. 25 & 62 (General Ability Paper) to be ambiguous but since the appellant answered them correctly, he was entitled to be awarded marks for those two questions. Further,as the appellant competed against one of the six posts reserved for BC-A Category and as one post was still vacant, so he could be appointed against the said post.

At the outset, the Court noted that after receiving the Commission’s response wherein it stated that the appellant’s objections were sent to an Expert Committee and based on its report the result was announced, the petitioner accepted this response and prayed for doing a round off of his marks from 39.9% to 40% in General Ability Test owing to the fact that two question from those which were deleted were marked correctly by the petitioner. 

Refraining from making any further observations on the merit of the case, the Court observed that its scope was limited to determining if pursuant to the recommendations of the Expert Committee which found the concerned questions to be  ambiguous/confusing, those questions could be deleted and, if  the Commission was competent to cause such deletion.

In this respect, reference was made to the judgment of the Supreme Court in Kanpur University v. Samir Gupta, wherein it was held that ‘Multiple Choice Objective-type test’ care must be taken to see that questions having an ambiguous import are not set in the papers because these exams have limited scope of marking ‘yes’ or ‘no’. It leaves no scope for reasoning or argument. If a defect in the answer key or questions is pointed out, a prompt and timely decision must be to declare that the suspect question will be excluded from the paper and no marks assigned to it.

Since the authenticity or correctness of the Expert Committee’s report was not even remotely questioned by appellant’s counsel, thus the Court dissuaded from interfering with the impugned decision of the Single Judge and dismissed the appeal.