Supreme Court has ruled in favour of the Uttar Pradesh Subordinate Service Selection Commission (UPSSSC), overturning an Allahabad High Court order that had granted one extra mark to a candidate over a contested general knowledge question. The dispute, which began with a single disputed answer in a 2016 recruitment exam, has ended nearly a decade later.
Background
The UPSSSC had, on January 18, 2016, advertised 3,133 posts of Village Development Officer. A written examination was conducted on June 5, 2016, followed by a provisional answer key and, after objections, a revised key. The final result was declared on July 18, 2018.
One candidate, Ashok Yadav, approached the Allahabad High Court seeking one additional mark, arguing that the Commission's answer to Question 68 was wrong. A Single Judge dismissed his plea on grounds of delay, and a Division Bench later dismissed his appeal too. However, a subsequent review petition succeeded - the High Court, relying on an expert opinion dated August 10, 2020, held that the candidate's chosen option was correct and directed the Commission to award him the mark and recommend him for appointment. UPSSSC challenged this reversal before the Supreme Court.
The contested question asked candidates to identify the incorrectly matched pair among four options linking Mughal-era chronicles to historical figures - Baburnama, Shahjahannama, Humayunnama and Tuzuk-e-Jahangiri. The Commission's answer key had marked "Shahjahannama - Mohd. Tahir" as the incorrect pair. The candidate insisted the correct answer was "Humayunnama - Humayun," since that chronicle was actually authored by Gulbadan Begum, not Humayun himself.
Counsel for UPSSSC argued that the expert report the High Court relied upon was ambiguous - it merely noted that the answer could differ depending on whether pairing was based on authorship or subject matter, and never declared the Commission's chosen answer wrong. Counsel for the respondents countered that since the question fell under the "General Knowledge" section, authorship was the natural basis for pairing, making the candidate's answer the correct one.
The bench of Justice Manoj Misra and Justice Vijay Bishnoi reiterated the settled legal position on judicial review of examination answer keys, holding that courts must interfere only when an error is glaring and needs no reasoning to detect.
The Court observed that a "commonsense approach of pairing the book with the subject" was not arbitrary, and that the expert report "does not say that option 'B'... is an incorrect answer."
It further noted that the writ petitioner had read authorship into a question that never specified any such parameter, adding that a candidate cannot claim a question "ought to have been drafted like this or that."
The Supreme Court allowed UPSSSC's appeal, set aside the Allahabad High Court's review order, and dismissed the original writ petition.
The Court held that neither the question nor the Commission's selected answer suffered from any patent error warranting judicial interference.
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