HC directs re-computing of Delhi Judicial Services exam results and publish them on Friday

The Delhi High Court has accepted the challenge to nine out of 15 questions asked in the Delhi Judicial Services (Preliminary) examinations and directed the Registrar General to re-compute and publish the updated result by October 4.

The court said apart from placing the list of additional eligible candidates on the website by 6 pm on Friday, the high court administration will communicate them by both SMS and e-mail of being qualified for writing the Mains exam.

The court was hearing a batch of petitions by law graduates aspiring to be judicial officers, challenging the correctness of the answer keys to some of the questions in the Delhi Judicial Services (Preliminary) Exams which was held on September 22.

A bench of Justices S Muralidhar and Talwant Singh declined the prayer of the petitioners to postpone the date of Mains exams, that is, October 12-13, as the high court has to adhere to the deadline given by it to the Supreme Court.

"In other words it is clarified that even the additional candidates found eligible as a result of the above exercise will have to necessarily sit for the Mains exam on the dates already fixed, that is, October 12-13," the court said.

It directed that results of the 353 candidates already declared eligible to appear in the DJS (Mains) Exams, in terms of the list published on the high court's website on September 26, are left undisturbed.

One of the petitioners, Nishant Basoya, through advocate Nivesh Sharma, argued that the high court's move to not even invite objections to the result and to immediately proceed to schedule the Mains exams for DJS after declaring the cut-off was shocking.

The court noted that this time, the authorities have departed from the practice adopted earlier where before declaring the results of the DJS Preliminary Exams the answer keys would be published on the website of the high court and objections invited.

This time the high court dispensed with the publishing of the answer keys prior to the declaration of the result, to adhere to the deadline of completing the entire examination and selection process before the end of February 2020, as undertaken by it before the Supreme Court in proceedings relating to vacancy and shortage of infrastructure in subordinate judiciary across the country.

In its order, the high court said that regarding the answer keys which it has found to be erroneous, the administration will proceed to apply the correct answer keys as decided by this court and recompute the results in accordance with the applicable rules.