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Mr. Anurag Chopra, Advocate for the High Court.

SUDIP AHLUWALIA, J. -

These Writ Petitions have been filed by various examinees who had appeared at the Preliminary Examination for selection to the Punjab Civil Service (Judicial) on 15.1.2017. They are aggrieved with both the Final Revised Answer Key to the multiple choice questions put to them, as well as the consequent list of successful candidates drawn up on February 7, 2017.

As such they seek issuance of Writs in the nature of 'Certiorari' and 3 of 32 CWP No.2822 of 2017 along with 17 connected matters 4 'Mandamus' to quash the impugned Revised Answer Key and List of successful candidates, with further directions upon the Respondents to modify/restore the originally published Answer Key, and to consequently revise/reissue the list of successful candidates.

2) Background of the matter is that after holding the preliminary Examination, the Respondent No. 1 on its website published its original Answer Key to the various questions and invited objections/responses of the candidates to the same, if any. A number of objections and counter-

objections were received, after considering which the authorised Committee of the Respondent made various changes to the original Answer Key and thereafter finally published the impugned Revised Answer Key followed by the list of successful candidates. It may also be mentioned that the Questionnaire Booklets provided to the examinees were themselves separately Code marked inasmuch as while the questions contained in the same were identical, yet their serial numbers differed in the various codified sets ostensibly to preclude any resort to unfair means in the Examination-

5) It is thus seen that the impugned questions number Eleven (11) in all.

These happen to be Question numbers 18, 22, 27, 55, 58, 65, 68, 71, 86, 91 5 of 32 CWP No.2822 of 2017 along with 17 connected matters 6 and 100 of the aforesaid Questionnaire Booklet. But before proceeding further, it would be appropriate first to take note of the various grievances of the writ petitioners vis-a-vis the Final Revised Answer Key in order to determine the relative merit in each of those grievances. These happen to be-