The Delhi High Court on Wednesday postponed the Delhi Judicial Services (DJS) Examination after the order of two petitions challenging the answer key of the Delhi Judicial Service examination of 2015 was reserved by a Bench of justices Sanjiv Khanna and Najmi Waziri.
The main (written) examinations of DJS 2015 were scheduled to be held on May 14 and 15. The next dates for the examination shall be notified later on, said the notification of the Delhi High Court’s registrar.
This postponement of the exams has come after two petitions were filed challenging two to three questions in the preliminary examination which were ambiguous in nature. One of the petitioners who sat in the exam secured two marks lesser than the cut-off limit for the main exam.
The other petitioner assailed only one question in the paper.
The Bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Najmi Waziri had previously issued notice in the first petition filed by Gupta and had sought a response from the Registrar of Delhi High Court.
Advocate Prashant Manchanda who is a counsel of one of the petitioners said, “Our plea was to stay the examination and to revaluate the entire question paper and answer keys and thereafter delete those questions which are inappropriate.”
“The paper contained many questions which were not properly phrased or were from outside the syllabus. Many of the answers as provided in the answer keys were clearly wrong and there were others which were not free from doubt,” the petition said.
Around 5,000-6,000 candidates sit for the DJS exam from across the country.
Earlier, when the case came up for hearing, it was submitted that the contentious questions in Gupta’s petition will be appropriately corrected and a revised answer key will be issued. After taking into consideration this submission, the Bench proceeded to reserve its order in the case.
Gupta’s plea filed through Advocates Arpit Bhargava and Hina Bhargava had said when the answer key for DJS 2015 was released it involved a lot of ambiguities and had many questions with multiple answers that were erroneously marked as correct.
Interestingly, the High Court came up with a notification in December 2015, inviting objections by candidate and further announced that it would be providing corrected answer keys to the candidates.