CENTRAL ADMINISTRATIVE TRIBUNAL PRINCIPAL BENCH, NEW DELHI O.A No. 390/2018 Reserved on : 20.11.2024 Pronounced on : 29.11.2024 Hon’ble Ms. Harvinder Kaur Oberoi, Member (J)

Hon’ble Dr. Sumeet Jerath, Member (A)

1) Sh. Jaspreet Dhingra (Aged about 36 yrs., Group 'C)

(Emp. No. 6284) (General)

S/o. Sh. Amarjeet Singh Dhingra R/o B-26, IVth Floor, DMRC Staff Quarter, Metro Vihar, Yamuna Bank, Shakarpur, Delhi-110092.

2) Sh. Raj Kumar Yadav (Aged about 38 yrs., Group 'C)

(Emp. No. 7506) (General)

S/o Sh. Suresh Kumar Yadav R/o E-106, Metro Vihar, Najafgarh, New Delhi-110043.

3) Tarun Kumar (Aged about 34 yrs., Group 'C)

(Emp. No. 9655) (General)

S/o (Late) Sh. Jai Kishan Saini R/o K-Block, House No. 21/23, Street No. 15 & 02, West Ghonda, Delhi-110053. ….Applicants (By Advocate : Mr. R. A. Sharma)

Versus

1) Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) Ltd.

Through its Managing Director, Metro Bhawan, Fire Brigade Lane, Barakhamba Road, New Delhi-110001

2) The General Manager (HR)

Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Ltd.

Metro Bhawan, Fire Brigade Lane, Barakhamba Road, New Delhi-110001

3) The Senior Deputy General Manager (HR)

Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Ltd.

Metro Bhawan, Fire Brigade Lane, Barakhamba Road, New Delhi-110001 4) Sh. Kishore Kumar Bharti (General)

(Emp. No. 10260/Sr. Maintainer)

D.M.R.C. Ltd.

5) Sh. Gagandeep Singh (General)

(Emp. No. 11464/Sr. Maintainer)

D.M.R.C. Ltd.

6) Sh. Surender Saini (General)

(Emp. No. 11453/Sr. Maintainer)

D.M.R.C. Ltd.

7) Sh. Sandeep Kumar (General) (Emp. No. 11501/Sr. Maintainer)

D.M.R.C. Ltd.

8) Sh. Hem Raj Sahu (General)

(Emp. No. 13211/ Maintainer)

D.M.R.C. Ltd.

9) Sh. Pravesh Giri (General)

(Emp. No. 11440/Sr. Maintainer)

D.M.R.C. Ltd. …Respondents (By Advocate : Mr. Kunal Sharma with Mr. Vaishnav Kumar and Ms. Yukti Aggarwal)

ORDER Per Hon’ble Dr. Sumeet Jerath, Member (A) :

This is the second round of litigation. Applicants earlier had filed OA No. 3847/2017 which was disposed of by this Tribunal vide order dated 03.11.2017.

2. There were six applicants earlier but now three applicants – Shri Nepal Prasad, Shri Sabyasachi Pati and Shri Raj Kumar Gupta have withdrawn from this OA and now only three applicants – Shri Jaspreet Dhingra, Shri Raj Kumar Yadav and Shri Tarun Kumar remains. The application seeking amendment in the Memo of parties was allowed by this Tribunal earlier vide order dated 13.03.2023.

3. The conspectus of the case as per the counsel of the applicants is that they have been working on the post of Senior Maintainer/Head Maintainer in the D.M.R.C. Ltd., and belong to unreserved category. They appeared in the Limited Departmental Competitive Examination (LDCE) through Computer Based Test (CBT) held on 29.07.2017 for the post of Junior Engineer (Electrical). According to the learned counsel, the candidates were allowed to view their marks secured by them in both Papers I and II immediately after conclusion of the exam. They attempted 84 questions correctly and viewed the marks secured by them and noticed that each one of them had secured 42 marks which were equivalent to the minimum qualifying marks for both papers I and II collectively for general category candidates. However, after the conclusion of the test, some of the candidates pointed out a small printing error in one of the questions in the English version of Paper-1 which was admittedly deleted by the DMRC from evaluation of marks. The DMRC evaluated Paper-1 for 49.50 marks instead of 50 marks, and the marks obtained by the candidates were extrapolated to arrive at 50 marks. However, in lieu of reducing the maximum marks to 69.5 in place of 70 and accordingly revising the minimum qualifying marks to 41.7 for general (UR) candidates, the DMRC kept the total marks as 70 for Paper-I and II and also maintained the minimum qualifying marks as 42 initially fixed for general (UR) candidates. The applicants had attempted the disputed question of Paper-1 correctly by using their common sense and viewing the Hindi version which was correctly printed notwithstanding the pr