Madhya Pradesh High Court
Pushpraj Tripathi (Minor ) vs The State Of Madhya Pradesh on 11 May, 2018
1
THE HIGH COURT OF MADHYA PRADESH
WP-12731-2017
(PUSHPRAJ TRIPATHI (MINOR) Vs THE STATE OF M.P. AND ANOTHER)
Jabalpur, Dated : 11-05-2018
Shri B.N. Sharma, Advocate for the petitioner.
Shri Ankit Agrawal, Public Prosecutor for the respondent
No.1/State.
Shri Ritwik Parashar, Advocate for the respondent No.2- Board.
1. The writ jurisdiction of this Court is involved under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, seeking following reliefs :
"(i) to conduct fair and proper valuation of the answer sheets of the petitioner under the observation of this Hon'ble Court by the experts in the subjects of "Social Science" and "English (General)".
(ii) to direct the respondents after valuation of the answer sheets of the petitioner, if the marks are increases, the responsible person should be punished accordingly.
(iii) to grant a sum of Rs.1,00,000/- along with interest as the compensation to the petitioner.
(iii) any other relief as deemed fit and proper in the circumstances of this case, along with cost of the petition be also awarded."
2. Grievance of the petitioner who is a student is that the answers given by him to the certain questions pertaining to subject of "English (General)" and "Social Science" in 10 th Class Examination conducted by the M.P. Board of Secondary Education, Bhopal in the year 2017 were not evaluated appropriately and therefore, the marks awarded are less than what petitioner expected.
3. Learned counsel for the petitioner has drawn the attention of this court to answers given to Question No.2, 6 & 18 in English (General) and similarly, to Question No.14, 15, 16, 19, 20 2 THE HIGH COURT OF MADHYA PRADESH WP-12731-2017 (PUSHPRAJ TRIPATHI (MINOR) Vs THE STATE OF M.P. AND ANOTHER) and 21 of Social Science subject.
4. Learned counsel for the rival parties are heard and the answers given by the petitioner are perused.
5. A bare scrutiny of the answers reveal that this is not a case of no evaluation. Grievance of the petitioner is that the quality of his answers deserve more marks than awarded. Thus the petitioner essentially assails the subjectivity of process of evaluation.
6. The Apex Court in Maharashtra State Board of Secondary & Higher Secondary Education vs Paritosh Bhupesh Kumarsheth AIR 1984 SC 1543 has laid down the parameters of judicial review of marks awarded in examination and the law laid down and reiterated time and again till date, is that the subjectiveness of the evaluation of answers by the Evaluators who are the experts in the field cannot be gone into by the Courts who are not equipped with knowledge in the relevant field. Matters of academic domain ought to be left for the academician to be dealt with and not for the Courts to adjudicate upon. Relevant extracts of the decision of the Apex Court are reproduced below for ready reference and convenience :
"The High Court has relied upon the fact that the University of Bombay and some other Universities have recently made provisions permitting candidates to demand revaluation. In our opinion, this has little relevant for the purpose of deciding about the legal validity of the impugned regulations framed by the Board. We do not know under what circumstances, the University of Bombay has decided to recognize a right in the examinees to demand a revaluation. As far as the Board is concerned, it has set out in the counter-affidavit the enormity of the task with which it is already faced, namely, of completing twice during each year the process of evaluation and release of results of some 3 lakhs of candidates appearing for the SSC and HSC Examinations to be held in an interval of 3 THE HIGH COURT OF MADHYA PRADESH WP-12731-2017 (PUSHPRAJ TRIPATHI (MINOR) Vs THE STATE OF M.P. AND ANOTHER) only a few months from one another. If the candidates are all to be given inspection of their answer books or the revaluation of the answer papers is to be done in the presence of the candidates, the process is bound to be extremely time consuming and if such a request is made by even about ten per cent of the candidates, who will be 30,000 in number, it would involve several thousands of man hours and is bound to throw the entire system out of gear. Further, it is in the public interest that the results of public examinations when published should have some finality attached to them. If inspection, verification in the presence of the candidates and revaluation are to be allowed as of right, it may lead to gross and indefinite uncertainty, particularly in regard to the relative ranking etc. of the candidates, besides leading to utter confusion on account of the enormity of the labour and time involved in the process."
Dealing with the scope of interference in such policy matters by Courts, the Supreme Court held :
"...... The Court can not sit in judgment over the wisdom of the policy evolved by the Legislature and the subordinate regulation-making body. It may be a wise policy which will fully effectuate the purpose of the enactment or it may be lacking in effectiveness and hence calling for revision and improvement. But any drawbacks in the policy incorporated in a rule or regulation will not render it ultra vires and the Court can not strike it down on the ground that in its opinion, it is not a wise or prudent policy, but is even a foolish one, and that it will not really serve to effectuate the purposes of the Act. The Legislature and its delegate are the sole repositories of the power to decide what policy should be pursued in relation to matters covered by the Act and there is no scope for interference by the Court unless the particular provision impugned before it can be said to suffer from any legal infirmity, in the sense of its being wholly beyond the scope of the regulation making power of its being inconsistent with any of the provisions of the parent enactment or in violation of any of the limitations imposed by the Constitution ... ... the Court should be extremely reluctant to substitute its own views as to what is wise, prudent and proper in relation to academic matters in preference to those formulated by professional men possessing technical expertise and rich experience of actual day-to-day working of educational institutions and the departments controlling them."4
THE HIGH COURT OF MADHYA PRADESH WP-12731-2017 (PUSHPRAJ TRIPATHI (MINOR) Vs THE STATE OF M.P. AND ANOTHER) Dealing with the contention that students who do very well in the examination, will be highly prejudiced if there is no provision for revaluation, and therefore Courts should interfere in such matters, the Supreme Court, held thus :
"It will be wholly wrong for the Court to make a pedantic and purely idealistic approach to the problems of this nature, isolated from the actual realities and grass root problems involved in the working of the system and unmindful of the consequences which would emanate if a purely idealistic view as opposed to a pragmatic one where to be propounded. It is equally important that the Court should also, as far as possible, avoid any decision or interpretation of a statutory provision, rule or bye-law which would bring about the result of rendering the system unworkable in practice."
Considering the question whether a right to revaluation should be recognized, while examining the validity of a Rule barring revaluation, the Supreme Court held :
"We are unable to agree with the further reason stated by the High Court that since 'every student has a right to receive fair play in examination and get appropriate marks matching his performance' it will be a denial of the right to such fair play if there is to be a prohibition on the right to demand revaluation and unless a right to revaluation is recognized and permitted there is an infringement of rules of fair play. What constitutes fair play depends upon the facts and circumstances relating to each particular given situation. If it is found that every possible precaution has been taken and all necessary safeguards provided to ensure that the answer books inclusive of supplements are kept in safe custody so as to eliminate the danger of their being tampered with and that the evaluation is done by the examiners applying uniform standards with checks and cross checks at different stages and that measures for detection of malpractice etc. have also been effectively adopted, in such cases it will not be correct on the part of the Courts to strike down the provision prohibiting revaluation on the ground that it violates the rules of fair play."
7. Since the entire grievance relates solely to subjective evaluation, this Court declines interference as the power of judicial review cannot be exercised to interfere with the functioning of the experts in the academic field. The anomaly of 5 THE HIGH COURT OF MADHYA PRADESH WP-12731-2017 (PUSHPRAJ TRIPATHI (MINOR) Vs THE STATE OF M.P. AND ANOTHER) one mark, here and there, can always be pointed out in any kind of manual evaluation undertaken even by the best of experts in the particular field. Therefore, if such subjective satisfaction is allowed to be successfully raised as a ground for judicial review of evaluation done by experts in academic field, it may open Pandora's box creating havoc and bad precedent.
8. At this juncture, learned counsel for the petitioner relies upon a final decision of the Single Judge of this Court dated 5.2.2018 in W.P. No.10027/2017 (Ku. Urvashi Rai vs State of M.P.), with all the humility at my command, the said decision being at variance to the verdict of the Apex Court (supra) is denuded of it's precedential value having no binding effect and thus is of no avail to the petitioner.
10. In view of the above, interference in the present petition being unwarranted, the petition thus fails and is hereby dismissed. No costs.
(Sheel Nagu) Judge vinod Digitally signed by VINOD VISHWAKARMA Date: 2018.05.17 11:37:04 +05'30'