Limited scope of judicial review in matters involving expert committees' opinions and decisions

JUDGMENT

1. Counsel for the petitioner submitted that the issue involved in this writ petition has been considered and decided by the Co- ordinate Bench of this court at Principal seat Jodhpur in the matter of Amit Swami & Ors. v. State of Rajasthan & Ors. (S.B.

2. Civil Writ Petition No.3959/2022 along with other connected matters) wherein on 27.05.2022, following order was passed:-

"These writ petitions have been filed by the petitioners seeking to question the revised answer key issued by the Rajasthan Subordinate and Ministerial Service Selection Board ('the Board') for recruitment to the post of Patwari pursuant to the advertisement dated 17.01.2020, preparation of a fresh answer key considering the objections raised by the petitioners for the disputed questions/erroneous answers based on the material produced by them and reevaluation of the answer-sheets and issuance of a fresh select list of provisionally selected candidates.

It is, inter-alia, indicated in the petitions that Advertisement No.3/2019 was issued by the Board inviting online applications for direct recruitment on the post of Patwari, competitive written examination was held in four shifts pursuant to the advertisement on 23.10.2021; the preliminary answer key was issued by the Board on 23.10.2021 and a press-note was published, whereby online objections towards preliminary answer key were called from the candidates with their respective supporting materials. The final answer key was issued by the Board on 25.01.2022 on the basis of decision taken by the Expert Committee on the objections raised by the candidates and list of two times provisionally selected candidates was issued for the purpose of verification of documents and credentials of the candidates. The petitioners have questioned the validity of large number of questions/final answers and/or the deletion of particular questions, based on the opinion of the Expert Committee. During the course of submissions, the petitioners confined their submissions to Questions No.76 and 86 of Question Booklet Series-104A, Questions No.141 (Master Question Booklet Question No.43) and 15 ((Master Question Booklet Question No.65) of Question Booklet Series-104B, Questions No.135 and 141 of Question Booklet Series-104C and Questions No.69, 76 and 98 of Question Booklet Series-104D.

The Board, which had appeared on Caveat, was directed to produce the experts' opinion on the questions alongwith supporting material for perusal of the Court, which has been produced by the Board.

Learned counsel for the parties were heard on various questions.

The petitioners have filed extracts from books/material seeking to support their contentions in relation to the validity of the questions/ answers and the decision of the expert committee thereon.

It would be appropriate to reproduce the disputed questions, the final answer based on decision of the expert committee and view of the expert committee: -

Question No.76 of Question Booklet Series- 104A:

76. From the given pairs of words you have to select the pair which is related in the same way as the words of the first pair. Mustic : Guitar :

:

(A) Water : Tank (B) Pen : Pencil

(C) Nose : Face (D) Word : Word

Processor Final Answer based on decision of the expert committee: (A) View of the Expert Committee: Initially the answer was (D). The Expert Committee opined that option (A) is more appropriate than option (D) because word processor is a computer programme generally used to write or process words, but as Music Comes from Guitar, water comes from Tank. Question No.86 of Question Booklet Series- 104A:

86. Input : more fight cats cough sough acts idea. Which of the following steps would be the last step for this input?

(A) III (B) IV

(C) V (D) VI

Final Answer based on decision of the expert committee: (C) View of the Expert Committee: The Experts, after indicating various steps, came to the conclusion with regard to correct answer by indicating as under: "More fight cats cough sough acts idea Step: