The central legal point established in the judgment is the authority to send papers for re-evaluation, permissible variation in evaluation, and the fairness and accuracy in evaluation.

Judgment

DR. ARUIT PASAYAT, J.- Leave granted.

2. Challenge in these appeals is to the judgment rendered by a Division Bench of the Karnataka High Court allowing the writ appeal filed by the respondents setting aside the order of dismissal by the learned Single Judge in the writ petition filed.

3. The background facts in a nutshell are as follows:

An examination was held by the appellant, Karnataka Power Corporation Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "the Corporation") for the purpose of selecting persons for the post of Assistant Accounts Officers. The said examination was held on two dates i.e. on 29-8-1991 and 30-8-1991. The result was declared on 19-12-1991. Twelve persons were declared successful in the said examination and by a circular dated 19-12-1991 the respondent, M.R.

Somashekhar was promoted to the post of Assistant Accounts Officer. Similar was the case with the respondent, A.T. Chandrashekhar.

4. Some time after the date of promotion, allegations were made that the Chief Examiner had allowed some of the candidates to write the examination papers at his house. On this allegation the Corporation decided to call for re-examination. The Managing Director initially did not agree with the suggestions. But he found substance in the allegation. that the Chief EJ\aminer purportedly made "test check" and added more marks in the case of some candidates. The papers were sent for evaluation to the Department of Commerce and Management, Bangalore University. On the evaluation done by the Department of Commerce and Management, Bangalore University, it was noted that the respondents had secured less marks than the required qualifying marks. Ultimately by circular dated 23-10-1993 the Corporation deleted the names of the respondents concerned by publishing revised results.

In the ultimate result 12 candidates were declared successful. Four persons were found unsuccessful on the basis of marks found on re-evaluation though at the first instance they were found successful.

5. Challenge was made by respondent M.R. Somashekhar and respondent A.T. Chandrashekhar by filing writ petitions. Both the writ petitions were dismissed by the learned Single Judge. Writ appeals were filed before the Division Bench. The prime stand in the writ appeals was that the decision of the Corporation to send the papers for evaluation to the Department of Commerce and Management was unauthorised. It was also their stand that the only person qualified to evaluate the papers was the Chief Examiner of the Corporation and subordinates to him and there was no provision in the applicable rules to get the papers evaluated by a third party, which in the present case was the Department of Commerce and Management of the Bangalore University.

6. The High Court allowed the writ appeals. It was concluded that on evaluation by different evaluators there is scope for marginal difference. The same cannot be a ground to hold that the first evaluation was wrong. It was held that there may be permissible limit of variation up to 5 marks which are to be ignored in the absence of allegation of malpractice on the part of the candidate or any fraud or irregularity in the examination or at the time of re-evaluation. The High Court found that this was not a case where large number of candidates were involved, and allegation of mass copying cannot be made as this was a case of test check.

7. The Corporation in its appeal has questioned the judgment of the High Court on basically three grounds regarding the following exclusions i.e. (1) Candidates were not given independent hearing before sending the papers for re-evaluation. (2) When malpractice is not proved the Corporation cannot send the papers for re-evaluation. (3) In re-evaluation variation up to 5 marks is permissible and such variation can be ignored.

8. Learned counsel for the respondents submitted that a comparison of the marks shows that the evaluation, as originally done, does not suffer from any marked difference. Therefore, the H