Ranjan Kumar Singh vs The State Of Bihar And Ors

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The petitioner, a Clerk in Project +2 Girls High School, applied for the post of Assistant pursuant to Employment Notice No. 01 of 2010 issued by the Patna High Court for 49 vacant posts and anticipated vacancies. He appeared in the written examination held on 10.04.2011 and secured 58 marks, but alleged that the question paper format was inconsistent with the answer sheet, causing confusion, and that the marks awarded were arithmetically impossible given the negative marking scheme and the odd number of questions he attempted.

The petitioner sought information regarding the question booklet, his answer sheet, and the model answer under the Right to Information Act. After exhausting the appellate remedies before the Public Information Officer and the Registrar (Admin-cum-Appellate Authority), the petitioner approached the Bihar State Information Commission, which directed supply of the question booklet. However, it was informed that no module answer sheet was prepared and the answers were known only to the experts who had set the paper.

The petitioner challenged the entire selection process on the ground that the use of OMR sheets for evaluation necessarily presupposes a computerised model answer, and the absence of such a module answer vitiated the evaluation process ab initio, rendering the final selection of 114 candidates arbitrary, unfair, and a nullity.

Catchwords: writ petition recruitment assistant posts Patna High Court OMR sheet model answer negative marking Right to Information evaluation process selection list transparency arbitrary selection