Judgment Intelligence
Petition AllowedGourav Paliwal v. Union of India & Ors.
2024:RJ-JD:35192
S.B. Civil Writ Petition No. 12829/2024
- Court
- Rajasthan High Court
- Date of Decision
- 27 August 2024
- Bench
- Justice Dinesh Mehta
- Relevant Acts & Sections
- Constitution of India — Article 226
Final Outcome
Writ petition allowed. The NTA must treat question 38 as unattempted, remove its negative marks, check question 50 and award marks if correct, declare the result by 30.08.2024 and consider the revised marks in second-round counselling (paras 41-42). A special appeal, D.B. SAW/878/2024, has been filed.
Key holdings
- A hole or cut on an OMR sheet is not an ink mark; treating it as an answer is illegal and arbitrary (para 35).
- Damage caused while opening the booklet packet is attributable to the invigilator or examining body, not the candidate (paras 25, 33).
- A grievance limited to one question does not bar relief on a second question whose evaluation depends on the first (paras 29, 38).
- A writ filed days after the revised result is not barred by delay and laches (para 31).
- Possible impact on other candidates is no reason to deny a candidate what is legitimately due (para 40).
Case explainer by NyayVidhan: an account of this judgment and the law it laid down, not the court's text. The judgment itself is the authoritative version.
Brief Facts
The petitioner took NEET (UG) 2024 on 05.05.2024. He said his test booklet and OMR sheet reached him cut by the scissors used to open the booklet packet, and that the invigilator refused to replace them (paras 1-2). On 31.05.2024, after the provisional answer key, he emailed the National Testing Agency (NTA) that his unattempted question 38 was being read as answered; the grievance was not considered (paras 3-4). Under instruction 2(b), only the first 10 questions attempted in Section B were to be evaluated (paras 14, 32). The NTA admitted the OMR sheet was torn but denied any fault, and objected that the email never mentioned question 50 (paras 15-17).
Court's Findings
On the original OMR sheet the Court found a hole in front of option 3 of question 38, matching a hole that ran through the booklet (paras 7-8). The NTA admitted that the petitioner's booklet was the first in the packet for his room (para 24). Given the strongly taped packaging, which could be opened only from the top-front, the Court rejected the claim that no scissors or cutters were used and accepted that the booklet and OMR sheet were torn before they reached him (paras 21, 26-27). The defacing was attributable to the invigilator or the NTA's agents (para 33). As the sheet bore no blue or black ink against question 38, treating the machine-read hole as an answer was ‘illegal and arbitrary’ (paras 34-35). The objection about question 50 failed: he could not know his marks before the result of 04.06.2024, and checking question 50 followed from the finding on question 38 rather than being an independent prayer (paras 29-30, 38). The writ, filed on 30.07.2024 soon after the revised result of 26.07.2024, did not suffer from delay or laches (para 31).
Legal Principle
Where an OMR sheet is damaged through the fault of the examining body or its agents, a machine reading of that damage cannot be treated as the candidate's answer. Without an ink mark the question must be treated as unattempted, and an answer pushed out of evaluation by the error must be assessed (paras 33-36, 38).
