Supreme Court seeks explanation from HPSC, HC on judicial exam bloopers

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court, taking note of the recurring bloopers and “large scale irregularities”, has asked the Punjab and Haryana High Court & Haryana Public Service Commission (HPSC) to explain why the exam held for selection of judges in Haryana shouldn’t be scrapped.

Sample this: “Raju is cutting wood with an axe at a place where children are playing. The axe flies off and kills a nearby child. What offence will Raju be liable for?” And the options offered were: 1) Murder. 2) Culpable homicide not amounting to murder. 3) Death due to negligence. 4) No offence.

Some of the candidates aspiring to be judges chose “death due to negligence” as the correct answer. Interestingly, the original answer sheet contained option C as the correct answer. But after a few candidates objected that the question did not clarify whether the axe fell “accidentally” or was thrown, the answer was revised to “No offence”.

Several candidates dubbed this a “glaring” and “patent error”, and petitioned the Punjab and Haryana High Court, demanding review of the decision taken by the committee set up by the high court. The court, however, did not entertain the argument, prompting aggrieved candidates to appeal before the Supreme Court challenging the revision of the answer sheet.

They also challenged answers to six more questions, calling them “patently wrong”.

The apex court has asked the high court and the commission to explain why the selection process shouldn't be scrapped. Advocate Sourabh Goel, counsel for the petitioners, contended that the reasoning given by the high court while dismissing their challenge to the answer key was “ex-facie fallacious”. Goel also said that the high court, responding to objections by other candidates to some other questions, “wrongly” deleted few questions from the exam.

On January 10, 2015, a preliminary examination of the Haryana Civil Service (Judicial Branch) was held. The exam, jointly conducted by the high court and HSPC, was taken by 16,186 candidates for a total of 119 posts of the Civil Judge.

The court had set up a committee, inviting objections to the answer keys, if there were any. Some candidates objected to some answer keys calling them erroneous. Responding to the objections, answers to some questions were revised and a couple were deleted from the exam. The revised result was published on March 5. Crying foul, another set of candidates challenged the decision.

Advocate Goel questioned the rationale given by the high court wherein it held that since the deletion had been implemented across the board, there could not be any grievance. “Such a reasoning is ex-facie fallacious since the deletion gave a premium to those candidates who had given wrong answers. The high court also failed to consider that the examination contained 1/5th negative marking and provided for a discredit for each wrong answer,” reads the appeal in the Supreme Court.