Sujasha Mukherji vs The Hon'Ble High Court Of Calcutta, Thr. ...

2 Succinctly stated the significant and singular facts of the case are that the Writ Petitioner/Appellant was placed in the second position of the Written Test for recruitment to the cadre of the District Judge (Entry Level) through Direct Recruitment from the Bar-2012. Had her marks not been moderated from 55 per cent to 37 per cent in Paper No.II her aggregate marks would have been 307 which is higher than the candidate at Serial No.1 by 6.5 marks; in other words, she was the topper in the Written Test comprising 5 papers. After moderation was carried out, [which it appears was conducted only in respect of Paper No. II], she stood disqualified from further consideration, i.e. appearing for the final stage of selection, viz., the Interview/viva voce for the reason that obtainment of minimum marks of 40 per cent in each paper was the pre-requisite for being called for the Interview. These facts have struck us as extremely significant for the reason that a candidate who stood First in the Written Examination (in five papers) has not been found suitable for even being called for the final step in recruitment, i.e. the Interview. It has been asserted by the Writ Petitioner/Appellant that she is a position-holder in the Calcutta University; she quite obviously also possesses extraordinarily high academic and scholastic merit. It has been vehemently contended before us, as also before the learned Single Judge and the learned Division Bench of the Calcutta High Court, that the moderation exercise has been undertaken even though it had not been notified or clarified at any stage that the examination would be subject to this scrutiny. Whilst the 2006 Guidelines were placed before and were duly approved by the Full Court, it appears that the 2012 Guidelines had not been placed before the Full Court but were followed by the three Judge Committee.

(vi) Where the number of candidates is very large and the examiners are numerous, it may be difficult for one Head Examiner to assess the work of all the examiners. In such a situation, one more level of examiners is introduced. For every ten or twenty examiners, there will be a Head Examiner who checks the random samples as above. The work of the Head Examiners, in turn, is checked by a Chief Examiner to ensure proper results.

11 The Appeal is allowed and the Impugned Judgment is set aside. Since an effort of moderation has been carried out we hold that a deduction of 10 marks being the appropriate mean arrived at be deducted from the initial marks of 55 obtained by the Appellant in Paper II. Despite this deduction the Appellant will remain at second position in the merit list. In fact, the position would be identical even if the Appellant were to be awarded the minimum marks of 40 per cent, i.e., by deducting 15 marks from the original marks obtained by her. We direct the Respondent-High Court to interview the Appellant within one week from its receiving knowledge of this Judgment. The result thereof must be declared within one week thereafter. The Hon'ble Chief Justice shall ensure that the Interview Committee does not comprise any of the three Examiners. If the result remains unfavourable to the Appellant the post shall remain unfilled for a period of 30 days therefrom.

12 There will be no orders as to costs.

February 19, 2015.