How Humayun landed a PSC candidate before Supreme Court over one mark

The Supreme Court was recently called to decide a dispute over the answer to a question that had Mughal emperor Humayun and the Humayunnama as one of the answer options in a State recruitment exam [UPSSSC v. Ashok Yadav].

The dispute arose from a 2016 examination conducted by the Uttar Pradesh Subordinate Service Selection Commission (UPSSSC) for recruitment to 3,133 posts of Village Development Officer.

One of the general knowledge questions asked candidates to identify the incorrectly matched pair from the following options: Baburnama–Babur, Shahjahannama–Mohammad Tahir, Humayunnama–Humayun and Tuzuk-e-Jahangiri–Jahangir.

The Commission treated “Shahjahannama–Mohammad Tahir” as the correct answer to the question. The UPSSC's basis for choosing the right pair was subject-wise pairing: matching each book with the person it is about.

A candidate, however, selected “Humayunnama–Humayun” as the answer, since Humayunnama was authored by Gulbadan Begum and not Humayun. The remaining options matched the books to their authors.

The candidate proceeded to challenge the Commission's interpretation that this answer was wrong, arguing that he was entitled to an extra mark for choosing "Humayunnama–Humayun."

This disagreement over one mark eventually reached a Bench of Justices Manoj Misra and Vijay Bishnoi of the Supreme Court.

The Court held that the candidate could not claim the mark since the question did not specify that authorship was the basis on which the pairs had to be examined. The Court opined that the Commission's approach was a plausible one, and refused to grant the candidate relief.

The Court acknowledged the unusual consequence of its conclusion: the candidate appeared to have lost the mark precisely because he knew who had actually written Humayunnama.

However, that itself is not a ground for the Court to interfere in such matters in the exercise of its judicial review powers, the Bench held.

“It is possible that if he had not known that Humayun is not the author of Humayunnama, he may not have opted for option ’C’. Therefore, one may feel that the writ petitioner is being punished for having knowledge about a historical fact. But that is not the ground to test the correctness of the question or the answer while exercising the power of judicial review,” the Court said.

The Court further reiterated the limited scope for judicial interference with answer keys in public examinations. A court can interfere in such matters only when an error is glaring, it said.

"In the event of a mere doubt about the correctness of the question or the answer, the benefit should go to the examining body and not to the candidate," the Court added.

The candidate had earlier approached the High Court in the matter, seeking an additional mark. A single-judge of the Court had dismissed his plea, following which a Division Bench rejected his appeal in January 2021. However, in review proceedings, the Division Bench relied on the expert report and awarded the candidate one mark.

The UPSSSC then moved the Supreme Court.

The expert report relied upon by the Allahabad High Court had itself acknowledged two possible ways of reading the question. According to the experts, if the pairs were based on authorship, “Humayunnama–Humayun” would be the incorrectly matched pair that the question sought, since the book was written by Gulbadan Begum.

However, if the books were being matched with the persons they were about, “Shahjahannama–Mohammad Tahir” would be the incorrect pair.

The Supreme Court said the expert report, therefore, did not establish that the answer chosen by the Commission was wrong. The candidate, the Court held, had instead read an unstated condition into the question.

“The writ petitioner committed an assumptive mistake which cannot be attributed to the question or the examining body,” the Bench observed.

The Bench added that candidates sometimes arrive at wrong answers because they misread a question or read something into it that is not there.

The Court proceeded to allow the UPSSC's appeal and set aside the High Court's order. The candidate's petition seeking an additional mark was, accordingly, dismissed.

Senior Advocate PS Patwalia appeared for UPSSSC along with advocates Talha Abdul Rahman, Sudhanshu Tewari, Deveshi Chand, Faizan Ahmed and Vibha Swaminathan.

Counsel representing various respondents included Senior Advocate Sudhir Kumar Saxena and advocates Himanshu Raghave, Umesh Dubey, Aviral Saxena, Harsh Srivastava, Abhinav Sharma, Shivansh Rajput, Fardeen Khan and Raman Chugh, Namit Saxena, MR Shamshad, Shashank Singh, Sanjay Kumar, Arijit Sarkar, Prapti Shrivastava, Sweety Gautam and Varun Singh.

[Read Judgment]