No HC help to students who failed test due to wrong questions

The Bombay High Court has refused to grant relief to four students, who failed to qualify written test held by Maharashtra Public Service Commission for posts of Deputy Collector as the minimum marks required for passing were cut down due to incorrect questions asked in the papers.
"The petitioners have not been able to establish that the corrective action of deletion of the questions adopted by the respondent (Commission) is either arbitrary or contrary to law," observed Justices R P SondurBaldota and V M Kanade.
The judges ruled that the course of corrective action proposed by the petitioners of allotment of marks to all the incorrect questions to every candidate could not have been a solution to the problem.

Since the evaluation of the papers involved negative marking, allotment of marks to incorrect questions would not have benefited everybody equally, they opined in a recent order.
With deletion of the questions and the marks thereof, not only the marks allotted to the questions but also the negative marking wherever given got deleted, thereby bringing all the candidates to the same level or position, the bench further held.
"The assessment of the candidates then was only on the basis of the remaining questions that had been attempted by them. Since, there is neither any arbitrariness nor illegality in the course of action adopted by the respondent, there cannot be any judicial interference with the same. In the circumstances, we do not find merits in the petitions and they are hereby dismissed," the bench said recently.

In two petitions, the four students had challenged the decision of MPSC of reducing the marks for incorrect questions in the four papers. One petition was filed by Abhijit Nikam, Manoj Pawar, Dattatray Gaikwad and other one was filed by Mahesh Singhal.