Atul Kumar vs Union Of India And Others

This petition has been filed by the petitioner being aggrieved of the dismissal of his Original Application (O.A) No. 61/465/2020 vide order dated

18.08.2020 passed by the Central Administrative Tribunal, Jammu, Bench Jammu (for short, ‘the Tribunal’).

Briefly stated the facts which arise for consideration in the present petition are as under:-

I) The petitioner, working as a Junior Engineer in MES and appeared in the Departmental examination for promotion to the post of Assistant Engineer.

The result of the examination was declared on 14.06.2019.

II) As the petitioner was not successful in the examination, he approached the respondents/College of Military Engineering, Pune vide his application

dated 21.10.2019 seeking revaluation of his answer scripts on the ground that he has performed well in the examination. This application of the

petitioner was considered by the respondents and rejected vide order dated 31.01.2020 on the following ground:-

a) As per ‘Rules for conducting MES Department Qualifying Examination Para 16’fwd vide E-in-C’s Branch/E1C (2) Letter No. 18 Apr

1995. The application of the candidate concerned for review of his answer papers should be submitted through proper channel so as to reach the E-in-

C’s Branch within three months from the date of the notification of the result of the respective examination. On receipt of the application only

arithmetic recheck of totaling of marks for all questions will be down by this college;

b) As the result was published by this college on 14 Jun 2019 so the last dt for accepting application for review of answer sheets has already expired

i.e., 14 Sep 2019

c) No provision exists for review of corrected answer sheets.

Aggrieved of the same, the petitioner approached the Tribunal on the ground that the respondents had invoked the wrong provisions for rejecting his

representation as he had sought revaluation and not revision of the answer scripts, and for the same, there is no prohibition under the relevant Rules,

therefore, his request should have been acceded to. The stand of the respondents on the contrary was that there is no provision for revaluation, as

such, the petitioner’s request could not be accepted and therefore, they by invoking relevant provisions rejected his application being time barred.

The learned Tribunal after hearing both the sides held that since review was made beyond the period of three months from the date of publication

of result, therefore, the respondents had rightly expressed their inability to consider the representation and even otherwise revaluation could only be

done if the relevant rules prescribed the same and accordingly, dismissed the O.A.

It is submitted that the order of Tribunal is arbitrary, illegal, unjust and against the provisions of natural justice. According to the petitioner, he had

only applied for revaluation of the answer scripts and not review of the same, therefore, the rejection of his application by the respondents is bad, since

there is no provision for revaluation, therefore, his application should have been considered for the same on merit.

Admittedly, there is no provision for revaluation in the Rules for Conducting MES Departmental Qualifying Examinations, therefore, the same had

to be considered under Clause-16 of the said Rules which provides only for review of the answer papers. Thus, the application of the petitioner was

rightly rejected by the Tribunal.

So far as the contention of the petitioner regarding revaluation of his answer script is concerned, it is settled that the same cannot be considered in

the absence of rules.

In Pramod Kumar Srivastava vs Chairman, Bihar Public Service Commission, Patna and others 2004 (6) SCC 714, the Hon’ble Apex Court

while considering a similar proposition in Para-7 has held that:-

“7 …………Under the relevant rules of the Commission, there is no provision wherein a candidate may be entitled to ask for re-evaluation of his

answer-book.............. In the absence of any provision for re-evaluation of answer-books in the relevant rules, no candidate in an examination has got

any right whatsoever to claim or ask for re- evaluation of his marks................â€​.

In our considered view in the absence of any provision for revaluation, the petitioner’s application could not be considered for the same. In the

application, though he has also used the word review, therefore, the respondents have rightly considered the same as review and rejected the same.

The learned Tribunal, thus, had rightly considered both the aspects and dismissed the petition.

In view of the aforesaid facts, we find no merit in the present writ petition and same is, accordingly, dismissed at the threshold alongwith its

connected application(s).