Gauhati HC Imposes Cost On Father Challenging Daughter’s Evaluated Marks In HSLC Exam As It Had 'Imaginary Cause Of Action'

Stating that the petition lacked a genuine cause of action by demonstrating infringement of any fundamental or legal rights, a bench of Justice Sanjay Kumar Medhi observed, “...It is unfortunate to notice that a trend has been set to file applications under Article 226 of the Constitution of India at the drop of a hat. Numerous cases have been seen to be filed with imaginary or very trivial causes of action. This Court is of the opinion that such trend has to be nipped in the bud and filing of writ petitions of the present nature has to be discouraged”.

Advocate AHMR Chodhury appeared for the petitioner, Advocate R. Mazumdar, Standing Counsel, Secondary Education Department, Advocate DK Roy, Standing Counsel, SEBA and Advocate AK Purkayastha, appeared for the respondent no. 10 - School.

In the present matter, though the HSLC examination was scheduled to commence from May 11, 2021, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the examinations were initially postponed and eventually cancelled with a decision to declare the results based on the marking / evaluation in the previous examination of Class-IX and certain other criteria. Accordingly, a set of guidelines were issued for such evaluation.

As per the guidelines:

a. 40% weightage on marks secured by the student in the theory portion of each subjects in the Annual Examination of Class-IX, of the year in which he/she has appeared and promoted to Class-X.

b. 40% weightage on marks secured by the student in the theory portion of each subject in the Pre-Board Examination.

c. 20% weightage on marks secured by the student in the theory portion of each subject in the Unit Test.

However, when the results of the HSLC examination, 2021 was declared on July 30,2021, the candidate failed as per the set guidelines for the exam.

The Secondary Education Department contending that the writ petition is misconceived, submitted The that the assessment done in the other papers also has been done strictly according to the guidelines and in fact by use of discretion, the highest possible marks have been allotted to the petitioner’s daughter.

The Court thus observed, “This Court is of the opinion that in view of such poor performance in the earlier examination which is evident from the marks secured in the above pattern, whether at all this writ petition should be entertained and the allegation of error in assessment be gone into is itself become questionable”.

However, for interests of justice the bench did proceed to take up one of the subjects to have an idea and to examine the grounds of challenge projected by the petitioner. It was observed that the candidate did secure less marks despite the added grace marks.

Thus the bench was of the opinion that the petition was not only misconceived but is also an abuse of the process

“..the instant writ petition, apart from lacking any genuine cause of action by demonstrating infringement of any fundamental or legal rights, or for the enforcement thereof, the background facts would reveal that there is no cause of action at all which requires any adjudication, that too by this Court exercising extraordinary powers under Article 226 of the Constitution of India.”, the single-judge bench noted while dismissing the petition.

Cause Title: Hilal Uddin Tapadar v. The State of Assam And 9 Ors [Neutral Citation No.: GAHC010202922021]