JUDGMENT :

Madan B. Lokur, J.

1. What a mess! This is perhaps the only way to describe the events that have transpired in the examination conducted by the U.P. Secondary Education Services Selection Board. We have reached the present stage of judgment after eight long years of uncertainty for, and three evaluations of the answer sheets of, more than 36,000 candidates who took the examination for recruitment as Trained Graduate Teachers way back in January 2009. Hopefully today, their travails, as those of the U.P. Secondary Education Services Selection Board, will come to a satisfactory end.

2. On 15th January, 2009 the U.P. Secondary Education Services Selection Board (for short the “Board”) published an advertisement inviting applications for recruitment to the post of Trained Graduate Teachers in Social Science. The recruitment was to be in accordance with the provisions of the U.P. Secondary Education Services Selection Board Act, 1982 and the Rules framed thereunder.

3. More than 36,000 candidates took the written examination held pursuant to the advertisement and the result of the written examination was declared by the Board on 18th June, 2010. It may be mentioned that the written examination was based on multiple choice answers which were to be scanned on OMR sheets.

4. The candidates who qualified in the written examination were called for an interview held between 16th and 26th July, 2010. Eventually, the combined result (written examination and interview) was declared on 14th September, 2010. According to the appellants, they were successful in the written examination as well as in the interview and were amongst those who were in the select list for recruitment.

5. Some candidates who were not successful in the written examination or in the interview filed writ petitions in the Allahabad High Court between 2010 and 2011. All these writ petitions were dismissed by a learned Single Judge. The reasons for dismissal of these writ petitions were that there was no provision for re-evaluation of the answer sheets in the Uttar Pradesh Secondary Education Services Selection Board Act, 1982 or the Rules framed thereunder. Reliance was also placed by the learned Single Judge for dismissing writ petitions on the decision of this Court in Himachal Pradesh Public Service Commission v. Mukesh Thakur, (2010) 6 SCC 759 in which this Court considered a large number of its earlier decisions and held:

“Thus, the law on the subject emerges to the effect that in the absence of any provision under the statute or statutory rules/regulations, the Court should not generally direct revaluation.”

6. Another batch of writ petitions (having 77 writ petitioners) came to be listed before another learned Single Judge of the High Court. The subject and issues were the same and the learned Single Judge admitted these writ petitions for final hearing notwithstanding the dismissal of several similar petitions. The challenge made by the writ petitioners was to seven questions/answers in the written examination which, according to them, had incorrect key answers. The learned Single Judge personally examined those seven questions and concluded that:

(a) The correct answer of question no. 24 in History paper would be option (1).

(b) For question no. 25, History paper, option (2) is correct.

(c) Option (2) is the correct answer of question no. 36 of History paper.

(d) Option (2) is correct answer in respect to question no. 37 of History paper.

(e) Question no. 40 of History paper is wrongly framed.

(f) In question no. 43, there may be two correct answers, i.e. options (1) and (3).

(g) In question no.32 of Civics Paper, option (3) would be the correct answer.

The learned Single Judge then proceeded to observe:

“It cannot be doubted that being a selection body for appointment of Teachers in Secondary Schools, the Selection Board was under a pious as well as statutory obligation to hold selection very carefully, meticulously and in the most honest and correct manner. The job o