1. Heard Mr.P.Venugopal, learned senior counsel, Mr.M.Sree Rama Rao for petitioners and Mr.Taddi Nageshwara Rao for respondents.

2. The petitioners pray for Mandamus declaring the action of respondents in digitally (online) evaluating the answer sheets of petitioners, as bad in law and direct the respondents to produce answer scripts of petitioners together with supplementary answer sheets so as to examine whether verifying/totaling of answer sheets has been properly done or not; verify whether all the answer sheets have been properly uploaded or downloaded at the time of evaluation done by the evaluators and consequently direct respondents to manually evaluate the answer sheets of petitioners.

3. The prayer and the circumstances for filing the writ petitions are substantially same in the batch of writ petitions and for convenience, I refer to the allegations and counter in W.P.No.26929 of 2016.

Allegations in affidavit:

4. The petitioners are pursuing P.G. Medical Degree/Diploma Course in respondents 3 to 10/Colleges. The petitioners appeared in the final examinations conducted by 2nd respondent/University in May/June, 2016. The stand of petitioners is that hitherto the answer sheets of examinees are corrected by the Examiners. The students had a right to verify the total number of marks assigned by the Examiners. The petitioners concede that revaluation was not permitted by the Rules of 2nd respondent. However, without prior intimation or knowledge, the answer scripts of May/June, 2016 have been subjected to online correction. The 2nd respondent did not inform the examinees about the change in the method of evaluation, namely from physical evaluation to digitised evaluation of answer scripts. The petitioners have come to know about the change in mode of evaluation only when the results were declared by the 2nd respondent. Therefore, the uninformed and inchoate method of digitized evaluation, it is contended, is arbitrary, illegal and unconstitutional. The petitioners from the available knowledge and information from sources make a few allegations against the service provider engaged by 2nd respondent for online evaluation. In this context, the petitioners state probable commissions and omissions which would have resulted in improper valuation of their answer sheets; the service provider is authorised to decode, scan and upload answer sheets on the computer to transfer the answer sheets to the respective examiners for correction. In the process, if the server is down during and in the process of uploading, all the answer sheets are not received in its entirety, thereby a few of the answer sheets of a student in the booklet go missing. The service provider does not take care whether all the papers have been uploaded or not. The petitioners suspect imperfection in uploading and downloading the answer sheets written by the petitioners. Finally, the 2nd respondent, after receiving the data from service provider, uploaded on the website the result along with the following notice.

“In view of the introduction of digital valuation and computerised totalling, there will not be any re-totalling of answer sheets. The decision to deny re-totalling after the examinations are written is impermissible.”

5. The petitioners submit that re-evaluation is different from re-totalling. The definite case of petitioners is that they are interested in knowing as to whether by virtue of online valuation of answer sheets of petitioners are factually and actually received by the respective Examiners and evaluated. The petitioners apprehend fault in uploading and downloading the answer scripts and, therefore, depriving the right of re-totalling is not correct in law. Since the re-totalling is not permitted the petitioners had no opportunity to see their answer scripts. The petitioners seek the indulgence of the Court to direct official respondents to produce the answer sheets of petitioners before the Court to verify whether genuine valuation was under