The court established that in the absence of normalization being prescribed in the notification, petitioners cannot claim normalization of marks as a matter of right.

JUDGMENT

(Prayer : Writ Petition filed under Article 226 of the Constitution of India seeking a Writ of Mandamus directing the 2nd respondent to adopt the normalization process for the marks secured by the candidates in the TET Paper - II examination conducted by the 2nd respondent pursuant to Notification No.01/2022, dated 07.03.2022 in 23 multiple sessions in various centers in the State of Tamil Nadu between 3rd February, 2023 to 15th February, 2023 as envisaged by the 2nd respondent itself in Notification No.01/2021, dated 09.09.2021 to derive rational and standardized results and ensure equality of opportunity as enshrined in article 14 of the Constitution of India for the candidates to get eligibility to write the competitive exam for the various cadres of teachers in the School Education Department pursuant to G.O.Ms.No.149, School Education (Aa.The.Va) Department, dated 20.07.2018.)

D. Bharatha Chakravarthy, J.

This Writ Petition is filed for a Mandamus directing the respondents to adopt normalization process for the marks secured by the candidates in TET Paper - II examination conducted by the second respondent pursuant to the Notification No.1 / 2022, dated 07.03.2022 and consequently, derive rational and standardized results.

2. The brief facts leading to filing of the Writ Petition are that the petitioners possess the educational qualifications of Higher Secondary and Two Year Diploma in Teaching and Education or such equivalent or higher qualifications. In order to qualify to be appointed as Teachers under the respondents, by virtue of the notification issued under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, originally vide G.O.(Standing) No.181, dated 15.11.2011 followed by the subsequent Government Orders, G.O. (Standing) No.149, dated 20.07.2018 being the latest, the petitioners have to secure a minimum of 60% in the Teacher Eligibility Test conducted by the respondents.

3. By a notification, dated 07.03.2022, applications were called for in respect of the said test and all the petitioners applied and undertook the test. The test was conducted between 03.02.2023 to 15.02.2023 in all totaling to 23 sessions. The respondents have set different question papers for different sessions and as such, the difficulty level was different. For example, when the fourth petitioner, P.Banupriya, wrote on 10.02.2023 forenoon, out of 11,562 candidates appearing along with her, only 231 candidates qualified constituting only 2% of the candidates who wrote the examination. Whereas, in a session on 07.02.2023 forenoon, while 10,105 candidates undertook the examination, 1,398 candidates qualified constituting about 12.15% of the candidates. Thus, it can be seen that the difficulty level in respect of various sessions varies and therefore, in such situations, the respondents ought to have followed the normalization process.

4. As a matter of fact, when the Teacher Eligibility Test was earlier conducted pursuant to the notification, dated 09.09.2021, a method of normalization was contained in the notification itself. Paragraph Nos.10 and 11 of the notification read thus :-

"10. Normalization of the marks:

The Computer Based Examination may be conducted in multiple sessions. Whenever Computer Based Examination is conducted in multiple sessions based on the same syllabus, same pattern for candidates having same eligibility criteria, the raw marks obtained by the candidates in different sessions will be converted to normalized marks. A candidate will be permitted to appear only in one session. Attending more than one session will automatically leads to disqualification of the candidature and no further correspondence in this regard will be entertained.

In case the examinations are conducted in only one session, actual marks obtained by the candidates will only be considered for calculating t