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17. The submission of the learned Counsel appearing for the petitioners is that omissions or mistakes in the application forms committed by the petitioners are the result of what may be called ''human error'. The petitioners do not stand to gain by the flawed entries. It is emphasized by Mr. Ojha, learned Senior Counsel that the application forms submitted online are to be subjected to verification by human agency, cross-checking the entries on a comparison with the original certificates/ degrees/ documents issued by the Board/ University/ Issuing Institutions. According to Mr. Ojha, therefore, the petitioners cannot stand to gain by entering some wrong particulars, that is to his/ their advantage, or if the facet of advantage be not there, an incorrect entry, in any case, would be detected during scrutiny. Learned Counsel further submits that these aberrations that are the products of sheer human error come about in consequence of the ground realities in the Indian social milieu. Mr. Ojha says that the hard reality cannot be ignored that majority of candidates applying for the posts in question hail from a rural background. Even if they come from urban areas, they are not truly urbane. They are not affluent young men or women who sit in the comfort of their homes, to fill up their individual forms on a privately owned computer facility. According to him, these application forms are filled up through public and common facilities, like cybercafes, where an indifferent third party - a commercial computer operator enters handwritten data relating to scores of candidates into individual computer generated online application forms. Cramped spaces and strained resources, in these circumstances, are often responsible for mistakes of the kind, escaping attention of an anxious candidate peeping over the operator's shoulder. Illustratively, he points out that in Writ - A No.4872 of 2020, in the column relating to total marks secured by the petitioner in his High School, Intermediate and Graduation examinations, the percentage figure of those marks has been entered by a sheer human error. These are, therefore, products of mistake, that ought to be permitted rectification of.

19. Mr. Seemant Singh, Mr. Anurag Dubey, Mr. Shivendu Ojha, Mr. Pankaj Kumar, Mr. Pramod Kumar, Mr. Shantanu Khare, Mr. J.S. Pandey, Mr. Vishesh Rajvanshi, Mr. J.K. Tripathi, Mr. Ashish Pandey, Mr. Harindra Prasad, Mr. Ramesh Kumar Shukla and Mr. Santosh Kumar Tiwari have elaborately addressed this Court with reference to facts of the respective causes in which they appear. Broadly on principle, they have advanced a submission that a mistake that is obvious to the eye as a product of human error, ought to be permitted reform of. They have also submitted that in the absence of demonstrable mala fides or fraud, which is a remote possibility, the candidate ought not be penalized for a mere human error. All the learned Counsel have, in one voice, distinguished these cases from those where an incorrect entry has been made in an OMR Sheet.

"20. The error committed by the candidates cannot be said to be human in nature. The petitioners should have read the instructions that were issued time and again and should have correctly filled the entries relating to the marks obtained by them in their previous examinations. The contention that this was an error committed by the Computer Operator cannot simply be accepted. If the Courts were to accept such a plea of the petitioners, then this would result in a situation where the petitioners would get the benefit of a wrong if the wrong claim went unnoticed and if noticed the petitioners could always turn around and claim that this was a result of a human error. Each candidate necessarily must bear the consequences of his failure to fill up the application form correctly. From perusal of the record, I am of the opinion that the error/errors committed by the petitioners are neither minor nor are human error/errors."

"18. In so far as the cases cited by the learned counsel for the petitioners are concerned, the same will not help the petitioners since in large number of cases observations were duly made by different Division Benches of this Court that in case any mistake was committed by the candidates during the course of examination, the writ court will not interfere in the matter.

20. The error committed by the candidates cannot be said to be human in nature. The petitioners should have read the instructions that were issued time and again and should have correctly filled the entries relating to the marks obtained by them in their previous examinations. The contention that this was an error committed by the Computer Operator cannot simply be accepted. If the Courts were to accept such a plea of the petitioners, then this would result in a situation where the petitioners would get the benefit of a wrong if the wrong claim went unnoticed and if noticed the petitioners could always turn around and claim that this was a result of a human error. Each candidate necessarily must bear the consequences of his failure to fill up the application form correctly. From perusal of the record, I am of the opinion that the error/errors committed by the petitioners are neither minor nor are human error/errors."