The court has the authority to direct the appointment of an Expert Committee to examine the correctness of the answers and can order the appointment of a candidate with seniority and incremental benefits based on the findings of the Expert Committee.

JUDGMENT :

Meenakshi Madan Rai, J.

1. The Petitioner is aggrieved by his non-selection as Under Secretary in the Junior Grade of the Sikkim State Civil Service for which written examinations were held in the month of July, 2017, viva-voce examination held in November, 2017 and result published in the month of December, 2017, the Petitioner is before this Court.

2. The facts pertaining to the matter were detailed by this Court in the Order dated 05-02-2021, nevertheless, for clarity in the matter they are being reiterated herein.

3(i). The Petitioner’s case, briefly is that, on 02-02-2017 the Respondent No.2, Sikkim Public Service Commission (SPSC), issued an advertisement inviting application from eligible local candidates for filling up 12 (twelve) posts in the Junior Grade of Sikkim State Civil Service through direct recruitment. The Petitioner as an eligible OBC (State List) candidate appeared for and was successful in the preliminary examination, consequently he took the main examinations with General English, General Knowledge, Public Administration & Management and Indian History as his subjects. The Public Administration & Management examination comprised of two papers of 150 marks each, i.e., a total of 300 marks. Similarly, Indian History also comprised of two papers with a total of 300 marks being 150 marks each in each paper. Part I of both the aforementioned subjects comprised of Objective/Multiple Choice Question (MCQ), while Paper II was Subjective/Conventional paper. For the MCQ papers each correct answer carried 2 marks while an incorrect answer was negatively mark by deducting 0.66 marks. The Petitioner was successful in the written examinations and shortlisted for the viva-voce examination but eventually was not selected for the advertised posts.

(ii) Aggrieved, the Petitioner filed an application on 08-01-2018 before the Respondent No.2 under the Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI) seeking the merit list of selected candidates. The required information was furnished to him on 24-01-2018. By a second RTI application dated 02-02-2018 the Petitioner sought information on marks obtained by all candidates in the viva-voce examination, copies of all the subject papers, answer keys and Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) sheets of objective papers, which were made available to him on 15-05-2018. Thereafter, he examined whether the answer keys provided by Respondent No.2 were correct.

(iii) In the meantime, on 18-04-2018 the Petitioner filed WP(C) No.12 of 2018 before this Court challenging the selection of the Respondent No.4 (herein) in the OBC (State List) category for the advertised posts as he fell in the creamy layer. The Writ Petition was withdrawn on 14-10-2020 by the Petitioner as Respondent No.4 resigned from the post. The Respondent No.4 also came to be deleted from the array of Respondents vide Order of this Court dated 26-08-2020 in I.A. No.02 of 2019 in the instant Writ Petition.

(iv) The Petitioner on searching for the correct answer keys found that the Respondent No.2 had provided wrong answer keys to 6 (six) questions of Public Administration & Management paper and 3 (three) questions in the Indian History, while one wrong question had been set in the Indian History paper and one question repeated. He avers that in the light of these errors, 11 (eleven) of his answers which were correct have been marked as incorrect thereby depriving him of 28.66 marks in the main(s) written examination. On 09-08-2018, the Petitioner filed an application before the Respondent No.2 for re-evaluation of the objective type questions while also raising concerns about the modifications made in the merit list of candidates wherein earlier he had ranked above the Respondent No.5 herein, but subsequently was ranked below him by the Respondent No.2 sans opportunity of being heard in the matter. The Respondent No.2 informed him on 2