Rohit Kumar v. Delhi Subordinate Services Selection Board

MANMOHAN, J AUGUST 25, 2010 pk

* HIGH COURT OF DELHI AT NEW DELHI Judgment Reserved on : 19th August, 2010 % Judgment Pronounced on: 25th August, 2010 + LPA 595/2010 ROHIT KUMAR ..... Appellant Through: Mr. Ajay Kumar, Adv. versus DELHI SUBORDINATE SERVICES SELECTION BOARD ..... Respondent Through: Mrs. Zubeda Begum, Ms. Sana Ansari, Advs. CORAM: HON'BLE THE CHIEF JUSTICE HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE MANMOHAN 1. Whether reporters of the local papers be allowed to see the judgment? Yes 2. To be referred to the Reporter or not? Yes 3. Whether the judgment should be reported in the Digest? Yes DIPAK MISRA, CJ In this intra-Court appeal preferred under Clause 10 of the Letters Patent, the legal substantiality and defensibility of the order dated 7th July, 2010 passed by the learned Single Judge in WP(C) No. 11522/2009 is called in question. 2. The facts, as have been uncurtained, are that the appellant-petitioner (hereinafter referred to as 'the appellant') invoked the extraordinary jurisdiction of this Court under Article 226 of the Constitution of India for issuing a writ of mandamus commanding the respondent to produce the record of the evaluators and all answer scripts of the 13 toppers of the Pre- Exam/Part-I of the impugned primary teacher examination and 10 copies of the toppers of the Main Exam/Part-II of the impugned primary teacher examination and to set an enquiry against the respondent to check the drastic irregularities in the examination pattern and the irregularity in the appointment of evaluators and further to hold that the evaluators are non- experts of the subjects in respect of the questions set and, hence, they were not eligible to evaluate the answer scripts. 3. It was pleaded in the writ petition that the respondent-Delhi Subordinate Services Selection Board (for short 'the Board') published an advertisement in various newspapers with regard to the vacancies for the post of Primary Teachers in the schools run by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (for short 'the MCD'). An examination was carried out for the posts in question on 15th February, 2009 which consisted of two parts, namely, Part-I which comprised of objective type questions meant for the qualifying test and Part-II, subjective type of questions which was for determination of inter se merit. The petitioners undertook the Part-II examination after getting qualified in the Part-I examination and despite their excellent performance, could not become successful. It was contended that there was a disparity of great magnitude in the marks obtained by them in Part-I and Part-II and that was because the papers of the Part-II examination were corrected by non-subject experts. It was urged that no instructions or key answers were supplied to any of the examiners to aid them in the process of correcting the answer scripts as a result of which the entire method of evaluation had become fallacious. It was highlighted that the Part-II main examination contained subjects pertaining to psychology, philosophy, educational technology, school management, methods of teaching, etc. but the evaluators were trained graduate teachers in subjects like English, Mathematics, Geography, History, etc. and, hence, the entire evaluation was basically erroneous. 4. Resisting the said stand of the appellant, the respondent-Board put forth that there was no irregularity in the appointment of the examiners of the answer scripts inasmuch as the selection process was absolutely transparent and the Directorate of Education had forwarded the names of responsible teachers for conducting the evaluation work. It was set forth that when the names of the teachers were recommended by the Directorate of Education, the grievance that they were disqualified was totally sans substance. It was further highlighted that the selection process undertaken by the respondent was for the post of school teachers at the primary level, that is, upto class V and, therefore, the examiners were eligible to correct the answer scripts. The allegation o