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Dismisses Plea for Manual OMR Evaluation of Garima Diwaker, Citing
Justice Siddharth Nandan held that exam instructions are binding and cannot be relaxed after the fact, rejecting a candidate's plea for manual checking of her OMR sheet.
The has dismissed a writ petition filed by Garima Diwaker seeking manual evaluation of her OMR sheet after she made a minor marking error in the 'Question Book Number' column. The Court held that examination instructions are mandatory and that granting such would undermine the of the recruitment process.
The Case: One Extra Bubble, 14,000 Rejections
Garima Diwaker appeared for an examination conducted by a state commission. She correctly wrote the Question Book Number—204103343—on her OMR sheet. However, while marking the corresponding bubbles, she inadvertently darkened the fourth bubble in the second column along with the first bubble (which corresponds to '0'). Because of this double marking, the OMR scanner could not process her sheet, and her result was not declared.
The petitioner argued that the error was minor and that the numerical entry was correct. She contended that the rejection was disproportionate and that the Commission should manually evaluate her sheet. The Commission opposed the plea, informing the court that approximately 14,000 candidates had made similar errors and that their OMR sheets had also been rejected.
Court's Reasoning: Instructions Are Not Optional
Justice Siddharth Nandan, after hearing both sides, examined a series of precedents from the and the . The Court noted that the law is well-settled: examination instructions are mandatory and candidates must strictly adhere to them.
The Court relied on the 's decision in
, which held that the is on the candidate to demonstrate not only that the key answer is incorrect but also that the mistake is glaring and requires no inferential process. Similarly, in
, the
set aside a High Court order that granted relief on
despite an
, observing that
"instructions issued are mandatory and have to be strictly complied with."
The also referred to its own Division Bench decision in and . In the latter, the court had refused to order manual checking of over 72,000 OMR sheets, noting that the error—incorrectly filling Registration Number, Roll Number, or Question Booklet Series—could not be called minor, as these details determine the identity of the candidate.
Key Observations: Cannot Be Compromised
Justice Nandan made several significant observations:
"The Court is also conscious of the fact that if such is granted subsequently then it may also result in making the of the examination process questionable; and therefore the OMR Sheets cannot be permitted to be evaluated physically either."
"It is no longer that instructions are mandatory in nature and the candidates are expected to read the instructions carefully and the OMR Sheets has to be filled up, as the answers given cannot be evaluated with infraction of the instructions, by the OMR Software Application."
The Court emphasised that candidates who are negligent in reading and following instructions cannot later seek to fill in columns or have their sheets manually evaluated. Allowing such exceptions would create a that could be exploited and would delay the declaration of results for all candidates.
Final Decision: Petition Dismissed
In view of the above, the Court held that no relief could be granted and dismissed the writ petition. No order as to costs was made. The decision reinforces the principle that with examination instructions is paramount and that courts will not interfere to relax those rules on , especially when large numbers of candidates are involved.
The judgment serves as a reminder to all examinees that OMR sheets must be filled with utmost care, as even a small marking error can lead to disqualification, and manual evaluation will not be ordered as a remedy.
