Courts Must Presume Correctness Of Answer Key, Interfere Only If Mistake Is 'Glaring And Apparent': Supreme Court

A bench of Justice Manoj Misra and Justice Vijay Bishnoi allowed the Commission's appeal against the Division Bench's review order which had reversed an earlier dismissal of the candidate's writ petition and directed the Commission to award him one additional mark, prepare a fresh recommendation, and directed the Uttar Pradesh government to grant him appointment.

For context, the Commission had advertised posts for Village Development Officers, whose results were declared based on a revised answer key. The present dispute concerns a question which asked candidates to identify the incorrectly matched pair from four options linking historical chronicles to their subjects/authors. The Commission's answer key treated option B (Shahjahannama - Mohd Tahir) as the correct answer, being the incorrect pair. The candidate (respondent) had instead marked Humanyunnama - Humayun (option C) as the incorrect pair, contending that Humayunnama was not authored by Humayun but by Gulbadan Begum.

Respondent's writ petition was dismissed by Single Judge on the ground of laches, following which the Division Bench dismissed his appeal. However, in the review petition, the Division Bench relied on an expert opinion to hold that both options could be correct “depending upon the perception of the reader,” and directed that a mark be awarded to the candidate.

Aggrieved by the Division Bench's order, the Commission approached the Supreme Court.

Before the Supreme Court, the Commission argued that the expert report was equivocal and did not declare option C as the sole correct answer. It contended that since the question itself did not specify authorship as the basis for pairing, a commonsense reading pointed only to option B as the mismatched pair.

On the other hand, the respondents argued that since the question fell within the “General Knowledge” section of the paper as opposed to the “General Intelligence Test” section, the authorship of a book was the more appropriate parameter for testing general knowledge, and thus option C ought to have been treated as correct, or at least both options should be treated as correct. Reliance was placed on Siddhi Sandeep Ladda v Consortium of National Law Universities, to argue that courts are not powerless to interfere with examining bodies where academic decisions adversely affect candidates' career prospects.

The Supreme Court framed the issue as, “whether the High Court was justified in interfering with Commission's decision to pick Option 'B' as the only correct answer to the concerned question?”

Reiterating the settled principles on judicial review of examination answer keys drawn from Ran Vijay Singh v State of UP and UP Public Service Commission v Rahul Singh, the bench observed that courts should presume the correctness of answer keys, and that the benefit of any doubt must go to the examining authority rather than the candidate. The Court reiterated that constitutional courts “must exercise great restraint” in entertaining pleas challenging the correctness of answer keys, and that the onus is on the candidate to show a mistake that is “totally apparent” and does not require any “inferential process or reasoning.”

Applying the above principles, the bench found that the question did not specify any parameter for identifying the incorrect pair, and that a “commonsense approach” of pairing each book with its subject (the approach adopted by the Commission), could not be termed arbitrary or irrational.

Examining the expert report relied upon by the High Court, the Supreme Court held that the report is “not categorical in saying that Option 'C' is the only correct answer. What it says is that if one adopts the logic of authorship of the scripture, option 'C' would be the correct answer i.e., pairing based on authorship; and if logic adopted is subject-wise i.e., on whom the book is written, option 'B' would be the right answer. Thus, the Expert Report does not say that option 'B', chosen by the Commission, is an incorrect answer.”

With regards to the respondents' reliance on authorship as the natural parameter, the Court observed that “writ petitioner is facing problem because he applied inferential logic to read into the question 'authorship of the book' as the guiding principle to select an incorrect pair, when no such principle or parameter is decipherable from a plain reading of the question. Thus, the writ petitioner committed an assumptive mistake which cannot be attributed to the question or the examining body.”

The bench further noted that while it may appear that the candidate was “being punished for having knowledge about a historical fact,” that could not be the test for judicial review, as the real test is whether the mistake is so glaring that it requires no inferential reasoning to demonstrate.

The bench also rejected the placement argument made by the respondents stating that the argument is void of any force. “The argument on behalf of the respondents that the concerned question fell in that Part of the Question Paper which related to General Knowledge, therefore only authorship could have formed the basis of pairing, is based on assumption. A question is to be understood as it stands and not what it ought to have been,” it was held.

In the light of the above, the Supreme Court concluded that neither the question nor option B suffered from any glaring error. It, thus, held that the High Court had “clearly overstepped its jurisdiction” in interfering with the Commission's answer key, more so while exercising review jurisdiction.

“The report does not in certain terms declare option 'B' as the incorrect answer. Moreover, authorship was not the underlying principle for finding out the incorrect pair. Thus, neither the question nor its answer is patently incorrect. In such circumstances, there was no occasion for the High Court to interfere with the decision of the Commission, that too, in the review jurisdiction,” it was held.

Case: Uttar Pradesh Subordinate Service Selection Commission v Ashok Yadav & Ors.

Citation : 2026 LiveLaw (SC) 937

Appearance:

For Appellant: Mr PS Patwalia, Sr. Adv.; Mr Talha Abdul Rahman, AOR; Mr Sudhanshu Tewari, Adv.; Ms Deveshi Chand, Adv.; Mr Faizan Ahmed, Adv.; Ms Vibha Swaminathan, Adv.; Mr Utsav Misra, Adv.; Mr Shuktiz Sinha, Adv.For Respondents: Mr Sudhir Kumar Saxena, Sr. Adv.; Mr Umesh Dubey, AOR; Mr Himanshu Raghave, Adv.; Mr Aviral Saxena, Adv.; Mr Harsh Srivastava, Adv.; Mr Amyra Rizavi, Adv.; Mr Abhinav Sharma, Adv.; Mr Vikas Rai, Adv.; Mr Apoorva Agarwal, AAG; Mr Namit Saxena, AOR; Ms Shraddha Saxena, Adv.; Mr Mithilesh Kumar Mishra, Adv.; Mr Amulya Dev Mishra, Adv.; Mr Ashok Kumar, Adv.; Mr Mohnish Nirwan, Adv.