IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH Civil Writ Petition No.11003 of 2009 DATE OF DECISION: JANUARY 19 ,2011 Vinod Gupta and others .....Petitioner VERSUS State of Punjab and others ....Respondents CORAM:- HON'BLE MR.JUSTICE RANJAN GOGOI, ACTING CHIEF JUSTICE HON'BLE MR.JUSTICE AUGUSTINE GEORGE MASIH Present: Mr. S. C. Nagpal, Advocate, for the petitioners. Mr. Rupinder Khosla, Additional Advocate General, Punjab, for the State. Mr. Ajay Kaushik, Advocate, for respondent No.3. Mr. Onkar Singh Batalvi, Advocate, for respondent No.4. **** RANJAN GOGOI, ACJ (ORAL) This Public Interest Litigation has been filed, seeking interference and appropriate direction from the Court with regard to certain irregularities that have occurred in the holding of the National Talent Search Examination (NTSE) 2008 insofar as the State of Punjab is concerned. The irregularities that have been mentioned by the petitioners in the writ petition are with regard to errors in the answer key to the objective type questions, which, according to the petitioners, have resulted in award of marks for wrong answers and denial of marks for the right answers. Accordingly, directions have been sought for a thorough probe into the matter and for identification of the persons responsible for such lapse and necessary Civil Writ Petition No.11003 of 2009 :{ 2 }: action against them. Of the written statements filed by the respondents, the written statement filed by the NCERT will require specific notice of the Court. In the said written statement, the NCERT has admitted that the conduct of examination was flawed by identifying wrong options as the correct answers in the key provided by the examiner. Further, the NCERT has also stated that immediately after detecting the errors, prompt steps were taken to rectify the situation and result of the first 81 candidates, who have been selected in the State of Punjab, does not suffer from any error as necessary rectifications were made. There is no material on the record to enable the Court to come to the conclusion that the errors in the answer keys were actuated by any malafide intent or extraneous reasons. The possibility of human error, therefore, can not be ruled out. The examination was held in the year 2008. Taking into consideration all the aforesaid facts and the statement made by the counsel on behalf of NCERT that prompt steps were taken to rectify the result of first 81 candidates which was declared without any fault or error, we are of the view that we will be justified to decline the direction as prayed for in the writ petition. We, therefore, do not entertain this petition any further. It is accordingly closed. ( RANJAN GOGOI ) ACTING CHIEF JUSTICE January 19, 2011 ( AUGUSTINE GEORGE MASIH ) MS JUDGE