MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court recently came to the rescue of a woman who was unable to get selected for the PG Assistant (English) recruitment, held by the Teachers’ Recruitment Board (TRB) in February, on account of a mistake in the answer key prepared by the board.
The court enabled her to get the extra mark and the job. Justice GR Swaminathan passed the order on a petition filed by K Vinopratha who alleged she was denied marks for two questions despite giving the correct answers.
The judge observed, “Judicial review cannot be totally ousted in certain circumstances. When the key answer is manifestly and patently erroneous, interference will be warranted. . .Otherwise, absurd consequences will ensue as a matter of logical necessity.” The judge chose to demonstrate this with his own example. “Assume, the question is ‘who is now the Prime Minister of India?’. The candidate writes ‘Shri.Narendra Modi’. If the key answer is ‘Shri. Rahul Gandhi’, will it not be absurd?” he asked.
Though the board argued that the court does not have the jurisdiction to entertain Vinopratha’s petition, the judge rejected it by relying upon the Supreme Court’s decision in the 1983 Kanpur University case. “The court cannot shut its eyes to what is too obvious and apparent. Only an ostrich donning judicial robes will hide its head in the sand,” he opined.
After establishing that there was a mistake in the answer key in one of the two questions, he directed TRB to grant an extra one mark to Vinopratha, which would make her eligible as per the cut-off mark, with further direction to the Director of School Education to issue an appointment order to her without delay.
However, the judge clarified that the relief granted would apply only to Vinopratha, who had approached the court as early as September 16, and no new petitions would be entertained as the recruitment process was over.
A PG in English literature, Vinopratha, scored 97.77 marks out of 150 in the written exam on February 18 but was not selected as the cut-off mark for BC (Women) category was 98.196. She sought marks for two questions.
She objected to the board’s decision to exclude question no. 71, in which candidates were asked to name the narrator of Emily Bronte’s novel ‘Wuthering Heights’, from evaluation. Though the board did so citing an error in the question, she claimed she wrote the right answer. The judge upheld the board’s decision, albeit with an instruction to hold the question paper setters accountable.
Question no. 108 pertained to American poet Allen Tate’s view on poetry, for which the board reportedly fixed ‘confusion’ as the correct option in the answer key, instead of ‘tension’. The judge cited material relied upon by the board’s expert committee and concluded that Vinopratha’s answer was correct.