Competitive exams: Can't ask question without appropriate answer, rules Punjab and Haryana High Court

Saurabh Malik

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 5

Putting an end to legal debate on deleting questions found by an expert committee to be ambiguous or confusing, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has ruled that a query not having a single, unique or “most appropriate answer” was incapable of being asked in a competitive examination.

This was in case of an objective multiple-choice question, where the candidate was required to merely mark a correct response.

The Bench of Chief Justice Ravi Shanker Jha and Justice Arun Palli asserted: “This may be because answer requires an explanation and argumentation or reasons for its justification, which is an exercise permissible for the exam where the format is subjective and not objective. A suspect question, thus, needs to be deleted so that no student gets advantage, or is denied advantage, because of the evaluation of such questions.”

The matter was brought to the High Court’s notice after a candidate filed a petition against the Haryana Public Service Commission (HPSC) and another respondent against the dismissal of his petition by a Single Judge’s vide order dated October 26, 2021.

The Bench was told that the appellant had competed for selection to the post of Assistant Engineer (Civil) in BC-A category pursuant to advertisement dated November 17, 2015, by the HPSC.

The Bench asserted that nothing stopped the appellant to press his claim or persist with his grievance, if he was aggrieved by the experts’ committee opinion to delete two questions in the general ability paper. But he chose not to and accepted the report forming the basis of the results, as also subject experts’ decision vide which his objections to certain questions were dealt with. The judgment on his initial plea was never assailed and attained finality. His second writ petition was not even maintainable.

The Bench added it still considered expedient to dilate on the issue whether two questions found ambiguous/confusing by the committee could at all be deleted and whether the Commission was competent to “cause such deletion”.

The Bench added that the examining authority, guided by the experts in the subject, was well equipped and, thus, rightly authorised to decide the answer-key and delete the suspect questions. The issue whether a question was framed aptly, or was required to be deleted being vague, ambiguous or with multiple correct was the exclusive domain of experts. Ordinarily the HC would not interfere with the opinion of the experts unless shown to be conclusively erroneous or flawed. 

Delete question

A suspect question needs to be deleted so that no student gets advantage, or is denied advantage, because of evaluation of such questions. — Chief Justice Ravi Shanker Jha & Justice Arun Palli, High Court