Judicial review in academic evaluation is limited; courts uphold procedures followed by professional bodies unless a statutory violation occurs.

ORDER

1. This petition has been filed by a student seeking a direction that the respondent – The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India treat the petitioner as ‘pass’ in paper 6F in the examination conducted for Chartered Accountant Final (New).

2. Facts in brief would indicate that the petitioner with Student Registration No. WRO0631708 has cleared the Common Proficiency Test and Intermediate Levels of examination conducted by The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI). The petitioner has appeared in the final level examination in May 2022. The examinations were held from 14.05.2022 to 29.05.2022. Paper 6F was a paper which was to be conducted as per open book methodology. It is the case of the petitioner having appeared in the paper which consisted of multiple choice questions accounting for 40 marks out of 100 and 60 marks out of 100 for descriptive type, received a phone call informing the petitioner that his case had been considered for unfair means by the ICAI.

2.1 Subsequently that miscommunication was clarified and it appears that the petitioner received a marksheet indicating assessment of only multiple choice questions where he secured 32 out of 100 marks and as far as descriptive questions were concerned he was assessed as ‘fail’. The result declared and the marksheet indicated that the petitioner had failed in paper 6F. A communication dated 25.08.2022 was issued by the ICAI informing the petitioner that it was noticed that the petitioner had not written the answers in the answer book, instead he had cut pasted the answers from the study material on the answer book.

3. Mr. Anshul Shah, learned advocate appearing for the petitioner would submit that if the answer sheet that was procured under the Right To Information Act is perused, in the written examination, the marks obtained was 28 out of 60 assigned for descriptive answers. The communication and the action of ICAI therefore declaring the petitioner as ‘fail’ after having assessed him in the papers was in violation of principles of natural justice.

The examination was an open book examination and therefore if the petitioner had pasted the answers from the extracts of the book, it would not amount to any unfair means and even otherwise the marks ought to have been allotted to the questions so answered.

3.1 Mr. Shah pressed into service the regulations known as The Chartered Accountants Regulations, 1988 (for short ‘the Regulations’). Stress was laid on Regulation No. 39(6) of such regulations which deals with examination results. He would submit that when a candidate had obtained the minimum number of marks for passing an examination, the Committee may, after giving an opportunity to the candidate, refuse to declare him to have passed the examination. The examination committee in the case on hand neither gave opportunity of hearing nor had reasons recorded for declaring him as ‘fail’ and therefore the action of the respondent institute violates the principles of natural justice. He would further submit that the instructions given in the admit card were followed which included the instructions that one should use only an ink ball point pen. No further instructions were given and this therefore did not prevent the candidate from adopting the method that he did adopt.

3.2 Mr. Shah would further rely on para 27 of the decision of the Apex Court in the case of All India Council for Technical Education vs. Surinder Kumar Dhawan and Others [(2009) 11 SCC 726] where it is mentioned