Lalit v. State Of Haryana And Another
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Mr. Tapan Kumar, DAG, Haryana for respondent No.1.
Mr. Gurnoor Sandhu, Advocate for respondent No.2.
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. %/ '0 ! "# $% &' ( & )) *++ ( notwithstanding that seven incorrect questions had been deleted in the final key, the petitioner has approached this Court. Learned counsel for the petitioner contends that the petitioner had applied for the post of Ayurvedic Medical Officer (Group-B) in Health and Ayush Department, Haryana against advertisement No.16 of 2024 dated 21.06.2024. He contends that as per the requirement prescribed in the announcement made by respondent No.2-Haryana Public Service Commission (hereinafter referred to as HPSC), a candidate has to secure a
minimum of 25% marks in the screening test, to be eligible to appear in the Subject Knowledge Test (SKT) and to participate in the subsequent stages of selection. It is further submitted that the petitioner appeared in the said examination/ screening test and the result of the same was declared on 09.10.2024. The answer key was eventually published by respondent No.2HPSC and objections against the same were also invited. Thereafter, on scrutiny of objections, the respondent No.2-HPSC published the final answer key, wherein seven incorrect questions were deleted. As per the said final answer key, the petitioner has secured 24.73 marks. It is further submitted that owing to deletion of seven wrong questions, the calculation of securing the minimum 25% ought to have been done out of 93 marks instead of 100 marks, which has not been done by the respondent No.2-HPSC. Hence, the present petition has been filed.
A reply to the writ petition has been filed today by the counsel for respondent No.2-HPSC, copy whereof has been supplied to the counsel for the petitioner. The relevant extract of the said reply reads thus: -
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.3 ; No rejoinder or replication to the abovesaid reply has been intended to be filed by the counsel for the petitioner.
I have heard the learned counsel for the respective parties and have gone through the documents and other material available on record with their able assistance.
It is evident from a perusal of the material available on record that as per the ( of the advertisement published by the respondent No.2-HPSC, a candidate participating in the screening test was required to obtain 25% marks to move on to the next phase i.e. the Subject Knowledge Test and viva-voce. It has further not been disputed that seven questions had been scored off by the Experts and the final result was prepared only on the strength of scores obtained by the respective candidates out of 93 questions.
The contention of counsel for the petitioner that the evaluation had to be done out of 93 marks is only a bogey argument. The requirement of securing minimum marks on the percentile formula inherently imbibes that the percentage has to be determined on a score of 100. The conversion formula being universal, the final assessment of score has been accordingly undertaken. The petitioner had secured only 23 marks out of 93 questions and on evaluating it in percentile, it worked out to 24.73%, hence, he has failed to secure 25% marks.
The argument thus is based on a notion and reflects complete lack of understanding of the mathematical concept of 'per centile' in which 'percent' itself means 'out of 100'. The calculation of percentile is done as per universally adopted and applied formula and hence is to be applied uniformly to all. It is not the case of the petitioner that his 23 marks out of 93 would be more than 25% of the score. Besides, he has also failed to refer to
any clause of the advertisement or the instructions as per which the percentile would be taken to the nearest round figure.
In the absence thereof, the petitioner cannot be said to have scored the minimum bench marks to be permitted to participate in the further selection process.
I further find support in my aforesaid view from the judgment of the Delhi High Court in the matter of Dr. Jitender Kumar Versus Union of India and Another reported as 2022 SCC Online Del. 2797. The relevant extract of the same is reproduced hereinafter below: - 4 6</ , 2 7 2 =
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; Under the given circumstances and in light of the foregoing reasons, I do not find that the petitioner is eligible to be considered for being permitted to participate in the Subject Knowledge Test having not cleared the screening test by scoring the minimum prescribed benchmarks. The petition is accordingly dismissed. /, (%
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