W.P.(C) 11927/2022 Page 1 of 8

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IN THE HIGH COURT OF DELHI AT NEW DELHI

Date of Decision: 26^th August, 2022

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W.P.(C) 11927/2022 & CM APPLs. 35617/2022 & 35618/2022

MS. AISHANI OJHA

..... Petitioner

Through:

Mr. Deepak Jain, Mr. Tanpreet

Gulati, Ms. Shaila Arora, Mr. Pradeep

KB, Ms. Akriti Arora, Mr. Aditya

Manubarwala and Mr. Varun Verma,

Advocates.

versus

NATIONAL TESTING AGENCY & ANR.

..... Respondents

Through:

Mr. Chetan Sharma, ASG with

Mr. Rupesh Kumar, Ms. Pankhuri

Shrivastava, Mr. Amit Gupta and

Ms. Sarika Sam, Advocates for R-

1/NTA.

Mr. Sanjay Khanna, Standing

Counsel with Ms. Pragya Bhushan,

Mr. Karandeep Singh and

Mr. Tarandeep Singh, Advocates for

NTA.

Mr. Farman Ali, SPC with Ms. Usha

Jamnal, Advocate for R-2.

Mr. Arjun Mitra, Advocate for R-JEE

(Advance).

CORAM:

HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE SANJEEV NARULA

JUDGMENT

SANJEEV NARULA, J. (Oral):

1. Petitioner who secured 75.7614055 in session 1 and 8.3123556 in

This is a digitally signed Judgement.

NEUTRAL CITATION NO: 2022/DHC/003280

W.P.(C) 11927/2022 Page 2 of 8

session 2 of JEE (Main) Examination, 2022 [hereinafter, “JEE (Main)”]

and is ineligible to appear for the JEE (Advanced) Examination, 2022

[hereinafter, “JEE (Advanced)], challenges the correctness of the final

score-card issued by Respondent No. 1 –National testing Agency [“NTA”]

on the ground of technical glitches resulting in non-recording of her

responses to several questions in session 2 of the said examination. She

prays for a direction to allow her to re-attempt session 2, and appear in JEE

(Advanced).

2. Briefly stated, Petitioner’s case is that she had attempted a total of 75

questions in session 2 of JEE (Main). However, to her utter dismay, when

the NTA declared the provisional answer key and candidates’ response

sheets on 03^rd August, 2022, only 3 questions were shown as attempted in

her response sheet. Upon discovering such error, Petitioner raised her

grievance before the NTA via several e-mail communications and even

personally submitted a copy of her application to obtain her audit log, but to

no avail. As there is no mechanism for re-evaluation/re-checking of results,

Petitioner is constrained to approach this Court.

3. Mr. Deepak Jain, counsel for Petitioner, alleges anomalies, technical

glitches, system malfunctions and other abundant errors in the conduct of

JEE (Main) resulting in grave prejudice to Petitioner, who has been unfairly

shown to have attained such a low percentile, despite her bright academic

record.

This is a digitally signed Judgement.

NEUTRAL CITATION NO: 2022/DHC/003280

W.P.(C) 11927/2022 Page 3 of 8

4. After hearing the preliminary submissions advanced by Mr. Jain, the

Court on 17^th August, 2022, while issuing notice, directed the NTA to file

the audit log and response sheet of Petitioner for examination. Consequent

thereto, NTA produced the record/ documents, which were thoroughly

examined by Petitioner and her counsel. Mr. Jain apprised the Court of

various discrepancies between the response sheet and audit log of Petitioner

(as produced by the NTA). Further, he submitted that as per general

instructions for conduct of JEE (Main) entailed in the information bulletin,

the examination was scheduled for 180 minutes [i.e., from 15:00 PM to

18:00 PM] and a clock is set by the server which automatically logs out the

candidate after the expiry of the allotted time. The candidate’s submitted

answers are recorded by the end of the said time. In that light, he pointed out

that about 42 responses of Petitioner were randomly cleared in last 13

minutes of th