Integrity of examination process upheld; technical glitches alleged by petitioner found unsubstantiated based on audit logs.

JUDGMENT

Sanjeev Narula, J. (Oral):

1. Petitioner who secured 75.7614055 in session 1 and 8.3123556 in session 2 of JEE (Main) Examination, 2022 [hereinafter, "JEE (Main)"] and is ineligible to appear for the JEE (Advanced) Examination, 2022 [hereinafter, "JEE (Advanced)], challenges the correctness of the final score-card issued by Respondent No. 1 - National testing Agency ["NTA"] on the ground of technical glitches resulting in non-recording of her responses to several questions in session 2 of the said examination. She prays for a direction to allow her to re-attempt session 2, and appear in JEE (Advanced).

2. Briefly stated, Petitioner's case is that she had attempted a total of 75 questions in session 2 of JEE (Main). However, to her utter dismay, when the NTA declared the provisional answer key and candidates' response sheets on 03rd August, 2022, only 3 questions were shown as attempted in her response sheet. Upon discovering such error, Petitioner raised her grievance before the NTA via several e-mail communications and even personally submitted a copy of her application to obtain her audit log, but to no avail. As there is no mechanism for re-evaluation/re-checking of results, Petitioner is constrained to approach this Court.

3. Mr. Deepak Jain, counsel for Petitioner, alleges anomalies, technical glitches, system malfunctions and other abundant errors in the conduct of JEE (Main) resulting in grave prejudice to Petitioner, who has been unfairly shown to have attained such a low percentile, despite her bright academic record.

4. After hearing the preliminary submissions advanced by Mr. Jain, the Court on 17th August, 2022, while issuing notice, directed the NTA to file the audit log and response sheet of Petitioner for examination. Consequent thereto, NTA produced the record/documents, which were thoroughly examined by Petitioner and her counsel. Mr. Jain apprised the Court of various discrepancies between the response sheet and audit log of Petitioner (as produced by the NTA). Further, he submitted that as per general instructions for conduct of JEE (Main) entailed in the information bulletin, the examination was scheduled for 180 minutes [i.e., from 15:00 PM to 18:00 PM] and a clock is set by the server which automatically logs out the candidate after the expiry of the allotted time. The candidate's submitted answers are recorded by the end of the said time. In that light, he pointed out that about 42 responses of Petitioner were randomly cleared in last 13 minutes of the examination; 12 of which were cleared at 18:01:44:560 PM, which is impossible, considering the automatic submission of the paper.

5. On the other hand, NTA controverted the allegations of technical glitches. Counsel for NTA, placing reliance upon the audit log, emphasised that Petitioner cleared the responses entered by her, and thus, the same were not evaluated and the percentile for session 2, as mentioned in the score-card of Petitioner, is correct. As regards the issue of substantial number of clearances, he argues that no reason can be conclusively attributed thereto as giving a particular response to a question is the prerogative of the candidate. Perhaps on account of the policy of negative marking for incorrect responses, she decided to clear the responses. It is generally a practice amongst candidates to not attempt the questions they are unsure of, in order to avoid negative marking.

6. Although Petitioner has not secured the cut-off percentile in either of the sessions, yet, having