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Mrs. Shoba Dixit and Kapil Sibal for the Appellants. M.M. Kshatriya, E.C. Aggarwala, Robin Mitra, K.K. Gupta, M.B. Lal, Anil Kumar Gupta and Brij Bhushan for the Respondents.
M.M. Kshatriya for Respondent No. 1.
Mohan Pandey for Respondent.
The Judgment of the Court was delivered CHANDRACHUD, C.J. These appeals raise a some what awkward question: If a paper-setter commits an error while indicating the correct answer to a question set by him, can the students who answer that question correctly be failed for the reason that though their answer is correct, it does not accord with the answer supplied by the paper-setter to the University as the correct answer ? The answer which the paper-setter supplies to the University as the correct answer is called the 'key answer'. No one can accuse the teacher of not knowing the correct answer to the question set by him But it seems that, occasionally, not enough care is taken by the teachers to set questions which are free from ambiguity and to supply key answers which are correct beyond reasonable controversy. The keys supplied by the paper-setters in these cases raised more questions than they solved.
So far so good. The snag lies in determining which out of the four suggested answers is the correct answer. That duty is naturally assigned to the paper-setter, who is required to supply to the University the correct answer to each question, called the 'key answer'. The difficulty involved in evaluating a very large number of answer-books is solved by the State Government, quite successfully, by computerising the result. The key answers are fed into a computer and the marking computerised.
"66. The net gain of A.T.P. Molecules in Glycolysis is (1) O (2) 2 (3) 4 (4) 8"

Whereas the students contended that the 2nd alternative furnishes the correct answer, the key answer which was fed to the computer was alternative No. 4. Here also, the various text-books cited by the students tend to show that the key answer fed into the computer was not the correct answer. The High Court has copiously referred to the standard text-books on the subject. We need not do so since, the more interesting part of this controversy is the expert opinion of Shri Arya Bhushan Gupta which was filed by the University in the High Court. According to that opinion, the correct answer to Question No. 66 is neither the 2nd option nor the 4th but the 3rd. In other words, according to Shri Gupta, the net gain of A.T.P. molecules in Glycolysis is neither 2 as contended by the students, nor 8 as mentioned in the key answer but 4 which is nobody's case except the expert's. Thus, the case of the University is demolished by its own expert. In these circumstances, we cannot find fault with the High Court for holding that the key answer is not the correct answer to Question No. 66.

The findings of the High Court raise a question of great importance to the student community. Normally, one would be inclined to the view, especially if one has been a paper setter and an examiner, that the key answer furnished by the paper setter and accepted by the University as correct, should not be allowed to be challenged. One way of achieving it is not to publish the key answer at all. If the University had not published the key answer along with the result of the test, no controversy would have arisen in this case. But that is not a correct way of looking at these matters which involve the future of hundreds of students who are aspirants for admission to professional courses. If the key answer were kept secret in this case, the remedy would have been worse than the disease because, so many students would have had to suffer the injustice in silence. The publication of the key answer has unravelled an unhappy state of affairs to which the University and the State Government must find a solution. Their sense of fairness in publishing the key answer has given them an opportunity to have a closer look at the system of examinations which they conduct. What has failed is not the computer but the human system.