No Express Provision Or Exceptional Circumstance: Madhya Pradesh HC Dismisses Student's Plea Seeking Re-Evaluation

The Court was hearing a Writ Petition seeking issuance of a Writ of Mandamus directing the respondents to re-evaluate or re-check the petitioner’s answer sheet and issue a corrected mark sheet or direct a re-evaluation by a different valuer from a nearby government school.

The bench of Justice G.S. Ahluwalia observed, “Since the sample questions, which were pointed out by the counsel for the petitioner during arguments were not suggestive of any exceptional circumstance, therefore, in the light of the judgment passed by the Supreme Court in the case of Ranvijay Singh (supra), this petition is dismissed on the ground that there is no provision for revaluation and no exceptional circumstance could be pointed out warranting revaluation of answer-sheets.”

Advocate Aniruddha Kumar Mishra appeared for the Appellant and Government Advocate Swati Aseem George appeared for the Respondent.

The Court noted that there is no provision for revaluation and in the absence of any provision for revaluation, the Court cannot direct for revaluation even by appointing the Court-appointed experts.

The Court relied on the decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Ran Vijay Singh and others v. State of Uttar Pradesh and others reported in AIR 2018 SC 52 and quoted, “If a statute, Rule or Regulation governing an examination permits the re-evaluation of an answer sheet or scrutiny of an answer sheet as a matter of right, then the authority conducting the examination may permit it; (ii) If a statute, Rule or Regulation governing an examination does not permit reevaluation or scrutiny of an answer sheet (as distinct from prohibiting it) then the Court may permit re-evaluation or scrutiny only if it is demonstrated very clearly, without any “inferential process of reasoning or by a process of rationalisation” and only in rare or exceptional cases that a material error has been committed”

To find out whether some exceptional circumstances requiring revaluation have been made out, the Court permitted the petitioner to point out some of the disputed questions as model questions. After comparing with the model answer- sheets, the Court found that either those answers were incomplete or were not correct. Therefore, the Court gave preference to the view of the experts appointed by the Board which cannot be substituted by the Court-appointed experts.

Accordingly, the Court dismissed the Writ Petition.