The Supreme Court on Tuesday frowned at attempts made by courts to interfere with the selection process by authorities conducting competitive tests observing that power of judicial review cannot extend to such an extent that the sanctity of an examination gets lost.
While reserving verdict on a plea by students seeking stay or cancellation of an upper-subordinate services exam conducted by the Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission (UPPSC), a Vacation Bench of Justices UU lalit and Deepak Gupta observed, “The sanctity of an examination will be lost if we keep on interfering with the decisions taken by an authority conducting the competitive examination through the power of judicial review.”
The petitioner students had alleged that answers to several questions of the UPPSC's preliminary examination held last year were “incorrect” and were agitated as the UPPSC did not re-evaluate the answer sheets as ordered by the Allahabad High Court. The UPPSC had challenged the HC order and obtained stay of the same on May 18. With the main examination scheduled on June 18, the students challenged the stay granted by the apex court.
Not satisfied by the HC interference in the matter, the apex Bench said that under writ jurisdiction, courts have to see whether the due process of law was followed in arriving at a decision but cannot go into the decision itself. The UPPSC told the Court that two committees of experts examined all objections following which the final list was declared on January 19, 2018. He informed the Court that over 16,000 candidates are to appear in the main examination next week.
The bench told the aggrieved students, “We can only interfere when there is a human error or a manifest error on the face of a decision. We have to see as to what extent the courts can go otherwise it will be a never ending exercise.” The Court expressed satisfaction over the deliberation done by the committee of experts.
The examination conducted by UPPSC was to fille 677 posts of upper-subordinate services in the State for which advertisement was issued in February 2017. The preliminary examination was conducted in September last year.