Can’t Simultaneously Seek To Rely On Response Sheet & Request Court To Tinker With Its Contents: Delhi HC Dismisses JEE Aspirant’s Plea Alleging Issuance Of 2 Score Cards By NTA

The Delhi High Court dismissed the petition filed by JEE (Joint Entrance Examination) aspirant who alleged that there was issuance of two response sheets and two score cards by the National Testing Agency (NTA).

The Court said that the aspirant cannot simultaneously seek to rely on the response sheet and request the court to tinker with its contents.

A Single Bench of Justice C. Hari Shankar observed, “There is nothing placed on record by the petitioner which would indicate that, before comparing the correctness of the option as chosen by her and reflected in the first response sheet, with the correct option as per final answer key released by the NTA for any particular question, one has to re-arrange the Option IDs in numerical order, or that the candidate attempting the paper had to rearrange the options in numerical order before choosing the correct option. Accepting this submission would require the Court to regard, for example, in respect of the options alongside Question 2 in the screenshot above, trat Option 3 as 4058593833, which is contrary to what is shown on the Response Sheet itself. The petitioner cannot simultaneously seek to rely on the Response Sheet and request the Court to tinker with its contents.”

The Bench said that the “rearrangement” plea of the petitioner cannot be accepted, for want of any material to support it.

Advocate Meenakshi Joshi represented the petitioner while CGSC Monika Arora and Advocate Sanjay Khanna represented the respondents.

In this case, the petitioner undertook JEE exam for entrance into Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and other Engineering Colleges, which provides admissions based on JEE. The JEE is conducted by NTA and the petitioner alleged that NTA uploaded two response sheets and two score cards on its website. The first response sheet was uploaded on February 6, 2024 and downloaded by the petitioner the next day. The second response sheet was downloaded on February 8 and the score cards were downloaded on February 12. The first score card reflected her score as 99.8493935 percentile and the second score card reflected her score as 74.5733907 percentile.

According to the petitioner, the first response sheet which was uploaded on February 6 and the first score card which was downloaded by her on February 12 and which reflected her score as 99.8493935 percentile, were correct, and the second response sheet which was uploaded on February 8 and the corresponding score card which was downloaded on February 12 did not pertain to her and were incorrect. She, therefore, sought issuance of an appropriate writ, quashing the second response sheet which was downloaded by her on February 8 and the second score card which was downloaded by her on February 12.

The High Court in the above context of the case noted, “… the writ court cannot adjudicate on disputed questions of facts, is a well settled principle. That this principle is not absolute is, however, equally well settled and, to that extent, Ms. Joshi is correct. There is no iron-clad proscription against a writ court adjudicating on disputed questions of facts. That course of action must, however, be followed in very rare cases, and only where the Court is satisfied that the material on record is sufficient for it to adjudicate on the disputed issue without having to enter into the arena of recording of evidence. It hinges, in the ultimate eventuate, on the discretion of the writ court, to be judiciously exercised given the relief sought and the extent to which the facts and the dispute are amenable to Article 226 adjudication.”

The Court observed that if one re-arranges the options in numerical order, the score reflected in the first score card may turn out to be correct and the difficulty is that there is not one, but two score cards. It said that had there been one accepted and admitted score card, one could have compared the two response sheets with that score card and even considered the petitioner’s submission that, while assessing the correctness of the responses chosen in the response sheet, one should first re-arrange the Option IDs in ascending numerical order.

“However, the petitioner cannot seek to use the first score card as supportive of her plea of correctness of the first response sheet as according to the respondent, both the first score card and the first response sheet are fabricated”, it added.

Furthermore, the Court said that the first response sheet, even if treated as correct, does not correspond to the score reflected in the first score card and hence, the petitioner did not succeed in making out a case.

“It is also difficult for the Court to believe prima facie that the functioning of the NTA is so faulty that, in an examination as prestigious as the JEE, two response sheets and two score cards can be issued for one candidate. While this Court cannot pronounce on the contention of Mr. Khanna regarding the logo of the Ministry or the emblem as reflected on the first score card, it is a fact that the QR code on the first score card, if scanned, directs one to Wikipedia”, it also remarked.

The Court concluded that any further enquiry into the controversy would require the court to enter into a dense factual thicket, which cannot be undertaken under Article 226 of the Constitution.

Accordingly, the High Court dismissed the writ petition.

Cause Title- Vibhuti Negi v. National Testing Agency & Anr. (Neutral Citation: 2024:DHC:4644)

Appearance:

Petitioner: Advocates Meenakshi Joshi and Aprajita Verma.

Respondents: CGSC Monika Arora, Advocates Sanjay Khanna, Pragya Bhushan, Karandeep Singh, Tarandeep Singh, Jitendra Kumar Tripathi, and Arjun Mitra.

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