Judicial review should not interfere with expert decisions unless clear errors are identified; moral considerations are irrelevant.

ORDER :

MILIND RAMESH PHADKE, J.

1. The present petition, under Article 226/227 of the Constitution of India has been preferred by the petitioner challenging the act of the respondents in not deleting the wrong question and correcting answers of 10 questions of Madhya Pradesh Assistant Registrar Recruitment Examination, 2022.

2. The petitioner was a candidate of M.P. Assistant Registrar Recruitment Examination, 2022 and upon declaration of the answer key by the respondent/MPPSC, certain objections were raised by the candidates, upon which 06 questions were deleted and for remaining 10 questions, objections raised by the petitioner was not considered, despite the answers provided by the respondent/MPPSC to the said questions were contrary to books, Gazette Notification, publication and other sources of information provided by the State of Madhya Pradesh and Government of India.

3. Short facts of the case are that the petitioner is a student of Agriculture and has completed his UG., P.G., and Ph.D. in the field of Agriculture. On 25.08.2022, the respondent/MPPSC had issued an advertisement for conducting examination for recruitment on the post of Assistant Registrar. The petitioner had duly participated in the said examination, as he was having all the requisite eligibility gave written examination bearing Roll No.111065 and got 270 marks.

4. Due to some error in questions and answers, numerous candidates including the petitioner had filed online objections within a period of seven days after paying the requisite fees as per the advertisement, to which the respondent/MPPSC had deleted 06 questions, but remaining 10 questions for which the dispute raised by the petitioner were not considered, as neither the questions were deleted nor the answer options were corrected.

5. The questions No.16, 19, 22, 41, 42, 52,55, 105, 108 and 126 as per Set-D were the wrong questions wherein there was error in the questions and answers when compared with the other books, Gazette Notification, publication and other sources of information provided by the State of Madhya Pradesh and Government of India.

6. On 26.07.2023 the respondent/MPPSC had published the list of selected candidates but the petitioner could not be selected, as the options for the questions mentioned above though were rightly answered by him, due to wrong references of the literature by the respondent, could not obtain the requisite marks. Being aggrieved by the aforesaid act of the respondent, the present petition has been filed.

7. Vide proceedings dated, 19.02.2024, the controversy was boiled down to questions No.19 and 55 of set 'D' provided to the petitioner and corresponding questions No.29 and 76 as provided by respondent/MPPSC. In the aforesaid regard, this Court had directed the counsel for the respondent/MPPSC to file a short reply corresponding to the aforesaid questions and in pursuance thereof, additional reply dated 03.07.2024 was filed wherefrom it is reflected that so far as question No.55 which pertained to "whether in the direct recruitment to the M.P. University Service, the combined upper ceiling of the reservation for SC and ST in the total posts advertised can be" was marked by the petitioner as option "[C]" i.e. as per population of these categories” whereas as per literature referred by the MPPSC considering Rule 11 of the M.P. State University Service Rules, 1983, but the correct option was option "[B]" i.e. 45%, therefore, when the petitioner himself has made a wrong choice, no marks could had been given to him.

8. So far as question No.19 was concerned, which dealt with "the total res