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Aggrieved by the action of respondent Nos.2 to 4 herein in not following the guidelines / principles laid down by the erstwhile common High Court for the State of Telangana and for the State of Andhra Pradesh in Dr. P. Kishore Kumar v. State of A.P.1 and Dr. J. Kiran Kumar v. State of A.P.2 as illegal, arbitrary and violative of Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution of India, this writ petition is filed by the petitioners.

2. The case of the petitioners is that directions given to respondent Nos.2 to 4 in evaluating answer scripts in the digital evaluation process by putting tick marks, 'x' marks, making remarks on the digital answer scripts by using digital tools like stylus etc., in respect of the Post Graduate Courses' examinations held in the month of July / August 2021 are not followed by them and the petitioners were not allowed to physically verify their answer scripts and also were not furnished copies of their answer scripts contrary to the afore-referred two decisions of the erstwhile common High Court.

5. Heard Sri D.V. Nagarjuna Babu, learned counsel for the petitioners, learned Government Pleader for Medical and Health and learned Additional Advocate General for Sri A. Prabhakar Rao, learned standing counsel for Kaloji Narayana Rao University of Health Sciences (respondent Nos.2 to 4), and perused the material on record.

6. Sri D.V. Nagarjuna Babu, learned counsel for the petitioners, has submitted that all the petitioners have failed with a slight margin and some of the students who got one mark less were also declared failed. Even if the candidate fails in one paper, he has to re-write all the papers. The evaluation process is a mockery. Hitherto, manual evaluation was adopted and digitalized evaluation was started in 2016. The answer scripts are subjected to scanning and scanned answer scripts are being evaluated by 4 (four) examiners indicating marks on the script memo, which is annexed to the script, is a known phenomenon for correcting OTQs and not for SA Type Questions. In Dr. P. Kishore Kumar's case (Supra 1), it was held that judicial review is not unavailable. The judgment in Dr. P. Kishore Kumar's case (Supra 1) was followed in the subsequent judgments of this Court in Dr. J. Kiran Kumar's case (Supra 2) and W.P. No.13965 of 2019 and batch and W.P. Nos.2236 and 2412 of 2021. The order dated 05.08.2019 in W.P. No.13965 of 2019 was confirmed by the Division Bench of this Court in W.A. No.757 of 2019 vide judgment dated 25.09.2021.

In Dr. J. Kiran Kumar's case (Supra 2), the following observations are made:

"24. ... ... the marks were filled up in a separate marks sheet and that is the reason why when an opportunity was given to the candidates to verify their answer sheets, the digital sheets were not shown to them, but only manual scripts were shown. If the digital evaluation method is transparent, each answer script evaluated by the examiner by using the tools provided for it should be saved for future review in order to see whether the examiner has applied his mind while evaluating the answer scripts or not."

17. The decisions relied on by the learned Additional Advocate General would not be of any help to the respondents as they do not cover issues relating to digital evaluation which is the core subject. As the specific issues relating to digital evaluation were adjudicated and decisions have been rendered in Dr. P. Kishore Kumar's case (Supra 1) and Dr. J. Kiran Kumar's case (Supra 2), in the opinion of this Court, the same have precedential value and as evident from the record, the respondents have violated the guidelines issued in the said two decisions. Hence, the action of the respondents is violative of Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution of India.