Candidates Not Entitled To 'Free Marks' For Dropped Out-Of-Syllabus Questions: Delhi High Court
The Delhi High Court has upheld the evaluation mechanism adopted in its Junior Judicial Assistant (JJA)/Restorer departmental examination, holding that candidates were not entitled to “free marks” for out-of-syllabus questions that were subsequently dropped from the paper.A division bench of Justices V. Kameswar Rao and Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora dismissed a petition challenging the...
The Delhi High Court has upheld the evaluation mechanism adopted in its Junior Judicial Assistant (JJA)/Restorer departmental examination, holding that candidates were not entitled to “free marks” for out-of-syllabus questions that were subsequently dropped from the paper.
A division bench of Justices V. Kameswar Rao and Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora dismissed a petition challenging the marking methodology adopted after certain questions in the departmental examination were found to be outside the prescribed syllabus.
The petitioners, who were employees working in Group-C posts such as Chauffeur and Court Attendant in the Delhi High Court, had appeared in the departmental competitive examination conducted for filling 71 posts of JJA/Restorer under the 25% quota.
The dispute arose after the Examination Cell identified certain questions in the Stage-I written examination as being out of syllabus. Three questions in the General Knowledge section and one question in the General English section were subsequently dropped following representations made by candidates.
The petitioners challenged the evaluation process adopted thereafter, contending that once questions were declared out of syllabus, all candidates who attempted them should have been awarded full or “free” marks. They argued that the mechanism adopted by the High Court led to arbitrary and differential treatment of candidates.
The respondents, however, defended the methodology, explaining that the marks assigned to the dropped questions were proportionately redistributed among the remaining valid questions through an extrapolation formula. They further pointed out that candidates who had correctly answered the dropped questions were given the benefit of those marks wherever it resulted in a higher score.
After examining the evaluation process, the Court upheld the methodology as fair and non-arbitrary. The bench explained that the extrapolation method effectively redistributed the value of the dropped questions across the remaining valid questions while maintaining the original total marks and cut-off threshold.
The Court noted that candidates who had correctly attempted dropped questions were granted the benefit of their efforts. It cited the example of one candidate who had secured higher marks after application of the extrapolation formula and was accordingly declared to have passed.
Rejecting the petitioners' plea for full marks irrespective of performance, the Court observed:
“We see no equitable basis for this claim of the Petitioners for seeking full marks for the dropped questions, which were either wrongly answered.”
The bench further held that the Supreme Court's decision in Kanpur University v. Samir Gupta (1983) did not support the proposition that candidates who wrongly attempted dropped questions were entitled to 'free marks'.
The Court observed that the respondents could have entirely ignored the marks secured in the dropped questions, but instead had adopted a more beneficial approach by giving candidates the higher of the actual score or extrapolated score wherever applicable.
Holding that the petitioners failed to demonstrate any arbitrariness or prejudice caused by the adopted method, the Court dismissed the writ petition.
Appearance: Mr. Ankur Chhibber, Adv. for Petitioners; Mr. Chetan Lokur, Adv. for R-1 and 2
Case title: Arvind And Ors v. Registrar General High Court Of Delhi And Ors
Case no.: W.P.(C) 5600/2026