High Court of Meghalaya
George Kazi vs . The State Of Meghalaya & Anr. on 23 May, 2022
Serial No. 01
Supplementary List HIGH COURT OF MEGHALAYA
AT SHILLONG
WA No. 22 of 2022
Date of order: 23.05.2022
George Kazi vs. The State of Meghalaya & Anr.
Coram:
Hon'ble Mr. Justice Sanjib Banerjee, Chief Justice
Hon'ble Mr. Justice W. Diengdoh, Judge
Appearance:
For the Appellant : Mr. A.S. Siddique, Sr. Adv. with
Ms. M.K. Sah, Adv.
Ms. A. Kharmyndai, Adv.
For the Respondents : Mr. B. Bhattacharjee, AAG with
Ms. Z.E. Nongkynrih, GA
i) Whether approved for Yes/No
reporting in Law journals etc.:
ii) Whether approved for publication Yes/No
in press:
JUDGMENT: (per the Hon'ble, the Chief Justice) (Oral)
The appellant is aggrieved by an order dated May 4, 2022 by
which the appellant's petition under Article 226 of the Constitution has
been dismissed.
2. The grievance in the petition was that due to an erroneous answer
to one of the questions in the Meghalaya Teachers Eligibility Test in
Bengali language that the appellant had taken, the appellant secured 89
marks out of 150 and failed to meet the cut-off criterion of 90 marks to
be found eligible.
3. It appears that the appellant had made representations to the
respondent authorities on February 14, 2022 and again on March 17,
2022, complaining that the answer to question No. 147 in the Bengali
paper was erroneous. It is the appellant's further contention that the
mistake in the answer would be evident from another question found in
the same paper. Question No. 147 in the Bengali paper pertained to the
number of genders in the Bengali language. Four possible answers were
mentioned and, in the objective type test, the correct answer had to be
ticked or indicated. According to the appellant, the Bengali language has
four genders and, as such, the appellant indicated "Four" to be the correct
answer. The appellant insists that such four genders are male, female,
"neutral" and "common".
4. The appellant places reliance on the appellant's answer to
question No. 146 in the same paper. Such question sought an answer as
to the gender pertaining to "Rashtrapati". The appellant answered that
"Rashtrapati" was a "common" gender and the appellant's answer was
found to be correct. Based on the correctness of the answer to question
No. 146, the appellant says that it is obvious that there are four genders
as "common" would be considered as another gender in addition to the
three traditional genders.
5. At the time that the appellant's writ petition was taken up for
consideration, the respondent authorities produced a letter dated April 19,
2022 under which a communication of April 18, 2022 was apparently
forwarded to Advocate for the appellant, dealing with the appellant's
representations of February 14, 2022 and March 17, 2022. The stand of
the respondent authorities was that the answer to question No. 147 as
indicated in the key later put up on the website was the correct answer.
The appellant was also reminded that the appellant had furnished an
undertaking to the effect that the appellant would abide by the finality of
answers chosen by the authorities and would not question the same.
Though no affidavits were called for by the writ court, based on the
respondents' reply to the written representations made by the appellant,
the petition was dismissed on the ground that the Court would not
interfere in such a scenario nor would the Court go into the veracity of
the answer.
6. The main basis of the appellant's challenge is that some grammar
book that the appellant has relied on also indicates that Bengali language
has four genders. The appellant contends that since the appellant was
entitled to one mark for correctly answering question No. 147, the Court
should now direct such additional mark to be awarded to the appellant for
the appellant to have qualified in the eligibility test.
7. Though it is not unknown for the Court to sometimes find an
answer to a particular question to be completely wrong, but that is when
the answer is obviously wrong and no reasonable person would accept
the authenticity of what is sought to be passed off as the correct answer.
In certain situations, there may be two possible answers. In such a
scenario, examiners are sometime lenient in marking both the possible
answers as correct. However, the Court does not have the expertise to go
into the veracity of the answer and in this case usurp the role of the
examiner while in receipt of a petition under Article 226 of the
Constitution
8. In this case, it is possible that from a particular point of view the
Bengali language may be seen to have four genders as answered by the
appellant. However, the more traditional view may be that there are only
three genders as the team of experts who set the papers and accepted the
answers in this case have indicated. At any rate, whether it was a possible
mistake or not, the situation was not unique to the appellant as the other
examinees faced the same situation. Further, the appellant had
undertaken, while taking the examination, that the answers indicated by
the authorities would be deemed to be the appropriate answers and the
same would not be questioned. In the light of the above, there does not
appear to be any merit in the appellant's contention that the writ court
ought to have interfered in the matter or played the role of a super-
examiner to undo the opinion of the experts in the field and award the
additional mark that would have allowed the appellant to meet the
eligibility criteria.
9. The writ court took relevant considerations into account. The writ
court found that the appellant's representations had been duly addressed
in a reasonable manner by the respondent authorities. In the
circumstances, the order impugned dated May 4, 2022 does not call for
any interference.
10. WA No. 22 of 2022 is dismissed. There will, however, be no order
as to costs.
(W. Diengdoh) (Sanjib Banerjee)
Judge Chief Justice
Meghalaya
23.05.2022
"Sylvana PS"
