New Delhi: In a bid to allay fears of discrimination, the Supreme Court Monday came out with a suggestion to have a former apex court judge re-evaluate all the answersheets of the Delhi judicial services examinations held last year.
A bench of Justices Dipak Misra and Prafulla C Pant said that it will ask one of the former apex court judge for "rational" re-evaluation of answer scripts.
"In the course of hearing of these writ petitions, a suggestion was given to the parties that in obtaining factual matrix of the case, there should be nomination of an examiner, who should peruse the answer scripts of candidates and submit a valuation report to this Court.
"Needless to say, such a step is being thought of regard being had to the facts of the present case," the bench said while posting the matter for next hearing on November 6.
The court passed the order while hearing a PIL filed by NGO Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL) alleging arbitrary evaluation of answer papers in the judicial services examinations held in 2014.
Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for CPIL, said that 659 students out of 9033, who were declared successful in preliminary examination, took the main examination held on October 10 and 11 last year.
"The result of this Main Examination was declared on May 1 2015, almost 8 months after the exam was held. Surprisingly, only 15 students (13 from General Category and 2 from reserved category) have been selected for the interview for total 80 vacancies. That means a total of 98 per cent of the students were failed and only 2 per cent managed to pass," Bhushan said.
He said that only 15 students have been called for the interview against 80 vacancies becomes "remarkable" as there are at least 68 candidates, who were not selected for the interview round, are "those who have already cleared judicial examinations of other States and most of them are sitting judges in their respective states".
To this the bench said,"we don't accept this submission Mr Bhushan. We cannot work on assumptions."
