Official records of examination are deemed accurate in absence of evidence demonstrating otherwise, entailing dismissal of speculative claims by the petitioner.

JUDGMENT

VIKAS MAHAJAN, J

1. The present petition has been filed seeking following reliefs:

“(a)Issue an appropriate writ, order or direction, including a writ of mandamus, directing the Respondent to rectify the discrepancies in the Petitioner’s Recorded Response Sheet for the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE Main) – 2025, Session 2, and to duly consider all the 46 questions attempted by the Petitioner, in respect of the Petitioner’s Application Number: 250310868069;

b) Issue an appropriate writ, order or direction, directing the Respondent to recompute the Petitioner’s NTA Score on the basis of the corrected Recorded Response Sheet and to declare a revised result accordingly, inrespect of the Petitioner’s Application Number: 250310868069;

c) Issue an appropriate writ, order or direction, directing the Respondent to review and rectify the errors pointed out in the final Answer Key and to take appropriate consequential steps in accordance with law;

d) Issue an appropriate writ, order or direction, directing the Respondent to permit the Petitioner to register and participate in the JEE (Advanced) –2025 examination provisionally, pending the final outcome of the present writ petition;

e) Issue an appropriate writ, order, or direction, thereby directing the Respondents to extend the deadline for registration to the Joint Entrance Examination (Advanced), 2025, in respect of the Petitioner, till the disposal of the writ petition;

f) Issue an appropriate writ, order, or direction, thereby mandating the Respondent to put in place an effective and transparent grievance redressal mechanism for addressing discrepancies in Recorded Response Sheets and related grievances of candidates, in a time-bound manner;

g) Issue an appropriate writ, order, or direction, thereby constituting an independent committee comprising senior officials, academicians, and technical experts to enquire into the discrepancies and systemic lapses in the conduct of the JEE (Main) – 2025 examination process, and to submit a report within a time-bound period as deemed appropriate by this Hon’ble Court”

2. The case set out in the present petition is that petitioner herein appeared for Session II of JEE (Main) – 2025 held on 04.04.2025 which is a Computer Based Test [hereafter ‘CBT’]. According to the petitioner, upon submitting his answer sheet after completion of his examination, a pop-up message was shown depicting that he had attempted 46 questions while 29 were shown as un-attempted. Thereafter, respondent no.2/NTA published a provisional answer key along with the recorded response sheets of the candidates on 11.04.2025. Upon downloading his response sheet, petitioner discovered that the value of number of questions attempted and un-attempted were inverted inasmuch as 29 questions were shown as attempted while 46 were shown as un-attempted.

3. Further, the grievance of the petitioner is that NTA had invited objections from 11.04.2025 to 13.04.2025, but restricted only to challenge against the answer key, and no option to dispute errors in their recorded response sheets was given to the candidates.

4. The present case was first listed before this Court on 01.05.2025. Learned standing counsel appearing on behalf of respondent no.2/NTA, on the said date, had refuted the claims of the petitioner, contending that JEE (Main) – 2025 is an examination conducted in CBT format. It was argued that in such a format, each and eve