New Delhi:
The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) cannot re-evaluate the civil service examination answer sheets due to absence of any rule for it, the Delhi High Court has held, while dismissing a plea to re-assess a candidate's answer scripts of the 2006 main examination.
Dismissing the civil service aspirant Syed Shabbir Ali's plea, a bench of justices B D Ahmed and V K said, "As regards re-evaluation of the answer sheet of petitioner Ali, admittedly, there is no rule of UPSC entitling a candidate to seek re-evaluation of his answer sheets"
"We, therefore, find no merit in the contention that the petitioner is entitled to re-evaluation of his answer sheets," the bench said.
The bench was hearing Ali's plea challenging the Central Administrative Tribunal's (CAT) order which had dismissed his plea for re-evaluation of his answer scripts in the Civil Services (Main) Examination, 2006.
In his petition, Ali had sought the bench's direction to the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) to declare him successful in the first rank in the Civil Service (Main) Examination 2006.
According to the petition, Ali had cleared the 2006 preliminary examination but had not been able to clear the main examination as he had not done well in English, a compulsory paper.
The English paper was a qualifying paper, for candidates of all categories, for the Civil Services Examinations 2006, as per the petition.
During the course of hearing, the bench had directed UPSC to re-total his marks in the English paper and inform the court about the cut-off marks for qualifying for it.
"On perusal of the record, we found that the raw marks obtained by the petitioner in English paper have been moderated and resultantly, he has been awarded higher marks, but despite that he was well below the qualifying cut-off which UPSC had prescribed in respect of the English paper. We also found that all the answers had been evaluated by the examiner and there was no totalling mistake," the Bench said "We are, therefore, satisfied that no mistake has been committed by the respondent in evaluating the answer sheet of the petitioner in respect of English paper and the petitioner has failed to obtain qualifying marks in the said paper," the Bench said and dismissed Ali's petition.