KOCHI: The High Court Registrar (Recruitment and Computerisation) on Thursday submitted before the Kerala High Court that no corrections were made by the Registry, and marks were not changed in the tabulation sheets of the Munsiff-Magistrate selection test.
The Registrar made the submission following a court order asking to file an affidavit explaining how the tabulation sheets in the Munsiff-Magistrate selection test happened to be corrected and the marks originally awarded were changed.
The court had passed the order on the petition filed by M Kiranlal of Thattamala, Kollam, seeking to stay all further proceedings, including appointment of the persons who were selected to the post of Munsiff/Magistrate.Registrar Venu Karunakaran in an affidavit stated that corrections in the answer sheets and the corresponding mark sheets of the Kerala Judicial Service Examination were made by the evaluators themselves, either during the course of evaluation or when the evaluators were recalled for making the corrections.
“All the corrections in the answer scripts and mark sheets were made by the respective evaluators themselves. Before the answer papers were subjected to evaluation, code numbers were assigned to maintain secrecy and to avoid disclosure of identity of the candidates. Sheets for entering marks were attached to all answer scripts, only for the convenience of the Registry to ensure that the candidates did not write more than the required number of answers, for the smooth evaluation and also to ensure accuracy in tabulation. This is not an authentic document. The final product of the evaluation is the statement of marks signed by the evaluators. There is no correction in that document,” the affidavit stated. The Registrar submitted that apart from the instructions in the question paper, the Registry had not issued any instruction to the evaluators regarding the manner in which marks were to be awarded to each question. Though, in general, the evaluators followed a particular pattern in the entry of marks, in exceptional cases they had resorted to other patters in awarding marks, which were not modified or changed by the Registry. In the final tabulation sheet (mark list) signed by all the evaluators, no correction is expected to be made.
“The evaluators were nominated by the Chief Justice. The Chief Justice has nominated 12 senior judicial officers in the cadre of district judge for evaluating paper-II to IV, dealing with law subjects. A retired English professor was nominated to evaluate the English Paper (paper - I). A centralised valuation was conducted,” the affidavit stated.